Fridge Horror / My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic - Season 2

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The Return of Harmony, Parts 1 & 2

• The season 2 opener gives a little piece in the form of one of Discord's lines directed at Princess Celestia: "It's quite lonely being encased in stone, but you wouldn't know that because I don't turn ponies into stone!"
  • At first, it seems like he's merely talking about his own fate at Celestia's hooves. A moment's thought casts a more sinister light on the princess: Just how many of those statues in the Canterlot sculpture garden are actually ponies who were Taken for Granite?
    • Alternatively, that could mean that there are a number of ponies who actually merited that action against them... which isn't much more comforting...
  • It also means that Discord was conscious the entire time he was turned to stone, a horrifying concept in itself.
• Discord has a Species name, think about the implications of that.
  • Phoenixes have a species name, and we in Real Life (at least where English is spoken) say "phoenixes" these days at least as often as we say "the phoenix", if not far more. Alternately, all that might mean is that Discord is to Draconequii what Hitler was to emo art students who flunked their entrance exam- Much more powerful, and certainly not lumped in with the others, but still technically part of that class.
• Discord created a "game" for the Mane Six to locate the Elements of Harmony, and Twilight Sparkle took it to mean in the Canterlot Hedge maze, which Discord took advantage of to corrupt them. In reality, the Elements were safely at Twilight's home in Ponyville... but suppose she had figured out the correct answer... how do we know Discord wouldn't have corrupted them there anyway?!
• Look closely at how Applejack behaves after her initial Discording. Once she starts talking to Twilight, she starts pulling odd pained or uncomfortable expressions. It's entirely likely that she is at that point completely aware of what is happening to her, but can't warn the others due to her uncontrollable compulsion to lie. Think about that for a moment: she just saw a vision of her best friends falling apart while Equestria is destroyed, and when Twilight asks her whats wrong, she finds herself unable to warn her, and can only insist that everything is fine while she watches everyone else get Discorded.
  • Everyone gives certain "tells" when they're lying from facial expressions to tone of voice. Applejack is just a really bad liar.
• Discord had so much power when he took over that the sun and moon were rising on their own accord. So, that being said...what did he do to Celestia and Luna?
  • He may not have done anything to them. It's entirely possible he bypassed them entirely and was causing the solar and lunar changes as suited him. Not that that's a good thing either...
    • Celestia was able to send all the scrolls back to Twilight
• Discord's reign over Equestria. All we get it was never-ending chaos and suffering for everypony but him. And we see stained glass pictures of him controling ponies and holding them over a pit of fire! On top of that, during that scene, you can here the suffering cries of ponies in the background (likely Celestia's memories). And we've seen what his idea of fun is already. No wonder Celestia is so afraid of him!
• Discord's reign of chaos seems pretty silly...then you realize that everyone is acting completely insane! On top of that, most of Ponyvile's population is Earth Ponies...and most a lot of Ponyvile was floating at the time.
• Discord's chaotic reign was getting progressively worse throughout the episode. What would it have ended up as if he hadn't been beaten?!
  • The Season 5's finale answers this question.
• More fridge Tear Jerker than Fridge Horror, but when Twilight got all of her old notes back from Princess Celestia, and they just kept coming, there is a scenario that most likely have played out for Celestia herself. If she has to send the notes one by one, something she must know would be harsh on Spike, then that means she couldn't just deliver the notes herself. That likely means Discord has her confined, probably in the castle, so she can't interfere. The fact that she keeps sending them means she doesn't know if they are getting to Twilight, or if they would help matters any. For the first time in eons, she is helpless, clueless, and has no idea how things will turn out. But if she is so cut off from communication, how does she know Twilight is in need of the notes? Discord likely stopped by to show his old rival the exact moment Twilight's heart, Celestia's last hope, finally broke. So the most likely situation is Celestia, feeling powerless and blind, knowing only that Twilight's spirit is broken, desperately sending letter after letter with no clue if it will change anything. Those may very well have been some of the most stressful and heartbreaking hours she has experienced in her long life.
  • If anything at all, it may have just as well redeemed her into regaining power, and while Celestia does deserve a medal for pulling such a Batman Gambit, you'd probably have to stop and think about all the errors she's had to correct on her part as a kind and benevolent ruler.
• Another example of a Fridge Tear Jerker: The scene where Twilight is trying to find the book about the Elements of Harmony, but her friends keep interfering her due to their corruption. It is, in a way, a rather accurate portrayal of bullying: what bully victim wouldn't relate to Twilight, whose own friends are bothering her for absolutely no reason? Who wouldn't be in a completely irritated mood, and on the verge of giving up? And think from the other ponies' perspective, the bullies' perspective. One day, you might be friends, possibly best friends with someone, but out of some internal and/or external force (think peer pressure and insecurity instead of Mind Rape), you find yourself to be the very person you hated. Then you start bullying your former friends; and it doesn't help that bully victims are often socially awkward "nerds" like Twilight. Fluttershy's reaction after being restored pretty much confirms this.
• In the second part of Return to Harmony, one of the things that Discord did was cause Granny Smith to start dancing and leaping around like a young filly. Remember one of the reasons Applejack was hoping to raise money at the Grand Galloping Gala? Wonder how Granny felt after the World-Healing Wave hit?
  • Alternatively, and no less nightmarish, what if her hip had NOT been fixed by Discord? She was dancing through terrifying pain, unable to stop herself.
• ...is anyone else concerned as to whether or not Screwball/Topsy-Turvy was wiped out of existence when the World-Healing Wave hit?
  • Maybe Screwball was the Discorded version of Mayor Mare or something.
• Not sure if this has been mentioned already, but Discord drove several ponies insane (i.e. Screw Ball). My question is, did they magically get better afterwards?
  • It appears so; Granny Smith and Big Macintosh were affected, and both are back to normal in later episodes.
  • Here's a thought. Big Mac was basically made to act like a dog under Discord's influence. In a later episode, we see an apparently insane pony who acts like a dog at the Ponyville Hospital (They presumably have a mental ward, then). Is she just naturally nuts, or is he one of Discord's victims who didn't recover for whatever reason?
    • She is later seen in the background at the front door of a house speaking to a nurse. She has been significantly rehabilitated. Is there an opposite of fridge horror for nice things?
    • Maybe while Discord was loose, the barking pony instead acted like Big Macintosh?
• Discord's prison weakens whenever the Elements change hands- er, hooves, to the point that anyone can walk up to him and break him free on accident. This previously wasn't a problem, since they were still partially attuned to Celestia the immortal sun god. But now they're attuned to ordinary mortals who will die one day...
  • It's possible that just being a holder of the Elements of Harmony makes one immortal, or changes one's fate such that something will happen that will make them immortal. Heck, Twilight became an Alicorn in Season 3.
    • Irrelevant, now that Discord did his Heel–Face Turn
• If Discord could forget how 'grim' Celestia could be, he must have experienced the passage of time. While turned into an unmoving stone statue.
  • He might be lying, though.
• The Mane Cast members were turning grayer when Discord corrupted them. Was Discord slowly turning them into stone?
  • Unlikely as he specifically mentioned that he never turned ponies into stone. Of course, stone ponies can't be tormented.
• While a lot of people consider Discord to be "evil" due to his Mind Rape and Break the Cutie tendencies, when you think about it, being the "Spirit Of Chaos", he most likely has no sense of "good" and "evil" (or at least not one that's the same as ours or the ponies'). This actually makes him more terrifying than if he were straight-up evil. Think about it. To him, causing all this mayhem, destruction, and insanity is a good thing to him. Rather than being outright malevolent, he's playful (well, as playful as a psychotic reality-warping god can get) towards the ponies much like a prankster child is to the people he tricks. He thinks everything is a game (hence why he gloats when he thinks he's won) without realizing/caring that he's hurting others. Imagine being an "ant" being at the mercy of a bored child and you'll get why Discord is more terrifying being "chaos" rather than just being "evil".
  • Want to make it even more horrific? Try keeping in mind that Discord is based off of (and even voiced by) Q. And, what did Q do when he was bored? Why, wipe out entire planets of course! Who's to say Discord wouldn't have caused a mass-extinction out of boredom as well? We don't see many other Alicorns, right?
  • There is a problem with this idea however. Discord is not just the Spirit of Chaos...he is also the Spirit of Disharmony. Remove that, and this idea works, as Chaos in and of itself is not good or evil. Disharmony however, is.
    • Not necessarily. Harmony isn't necessarily "good", since it can also be considered balance. Is balance that ensures good and evil can never permanently win good? Is balance between anti-matter and matter good? Disharmony can mean as much the breaking of laws of nature as it can giving a mismatched fight that ends the Forever War.
    • While balance does mean everything has to be even, Harmony in itself just means "a consistent, orderly, or pleasing arrangement of parts", that is for example, a cake would be bad if you had the same amount of every ingredient, but follow the actual recipe and will be awesome. Good and Evil being in harmony could mean that they will be always fighting, that Good always triumph over evil or anything like that.
  • Think about what it means to be Discord. Freakish apperance. Abilities that ignore laws of physics and sense. A sense of values that is either insane or unrelated to our own. Defying all nature. There is one group of entity that share all these traits with Discord: The Eldritch Abomination.
• How about the fact that Discord is essentially chaos incarnate? You could (hypothetically) destroy the likes of Chrysalis or even Luna and Celestia (since one could hypothetically destroy the sun and/or moon, horror in-and-of itself). Discord, on the other hand, is essentially immortal. He can't be killed. All you can do is imprison him until he's set free once again...and there's always a chance he'll be set free again.
  • Even assuming that Discord is in fact the, or at least an, draconequimorphic personification of "chaos", that doesn't necessarily make him as Discord indestructible in the slightest. It's entirely possible that if he ever was destroyed he'd simply be replaced with some new and original chaos avatar. (Of course, for a bit of existential fridge horror from Discord's perspective, the same thing could also simply just happen to him at any given time...)
• If Discord won, who knows how bad Equestria will be or the Corrupted Six over time
• Considering the Crusaders where shown to be main contributors (wittingly or not) of Discord's release, you'd think we'd see what had become of them... except we don't even see Apple Bloom when Twilight goes to Sweet Apple Acres. They obviously got better, but what exactly happened to them at the time?!

Lesson Zero

• Twilight thinks that if she fails her give a friendship report, Princess Celestia will send her to the moon to continue her studies. This means Twilight considers failing the princess on par with trying to kill her, as that was the only other reason that anyone else was ever sent to the moon.
• Twilight Sparkle's Sanity Slippage fits in context of the episode of "Lesson Zero". Out of context, however....
• "Want-It Need-It spell, works every time".
  • Who on earth would Twilight use such a thing on? Her fear of the kindergarten clearly indicates some very painful Loners Are Freaks memories, but that was before she learned her magic. So, it would have to be while under the Princess' care in Canterlot... suddenly it seems very wise of the Princess to get her to find some friends...
  • Made even more scary when you realize that social rejection and constant need for approval are common traits displayed by rape victims. Could it be that Celestia used that spell on Twilight? Would explain her questionable behavior around the CMC and telling Pinkie not to scream. To Twilight, it's perfectly normal behavior.
    • Pinkie had been screaming at every given opportunity, misinterpreting (deliberately, though we don't learn that until later) Luna's actions as something scary and running away, prompting a bunch of foals to do the same, leaving poor Luna, who just wants to be accepted, alone again. And this behavior is coming from one of the six who had a hoof in breaking the Nightmare's hold on her. Telling her not to scream? Oh, yeah, that's completely questionable, and not at all a reasonable request.
    • I don't think "rape", moreso as those are common traits more akin to people that are bullied; the urge to suck up to authority and so everything you do is always right, so you're never criticized, so you're never excluded. This Troper has vivid memories of being bullied, and she knows that Twilight has the same behavioral patterns as someone that suffered from social rejection by her peers. Would that explain why she's so eager to please and terrified of failure? She even envisions fillies laughing at her.
• At the end of "Lesson Zero" Princess Celestia declares that the Mane Six must start sending in friendship reports whenever they discover them so that Twilight isn't punished, essentially placing them in an open-ended contract with no specificities, agreements between parties, or terms over what qualifies as a friendship report leaving plenty of room for Celestia to change it as she chooses, such as establishing a report quota, a required length, declaring what the punishment for not sending in friendship reports would be, or just all out declaring the invalidity of lessons learned in friendship reports. And we don't even know what Twilight's punishment was going to be, the Mane Six could have just entered a Faustian bargain to prevent a punishment to Twilight that could have been disproportionately better than them spending the rest of their lives filling friendship reports for Celestia.
  • I believe the phrasing was 'can', not 'must', so in effect she was giving her subjects permission to write to her if they felt they had something to say.
    • She also says "when and only when, you happen to discover them", and Applejack breaks that rule in "The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000", writing a letter to Celestia that specifically says she didn't learn anything at all. Given that Applejack is not banished, in a dungeon, or banished and then thrown in a dungeon in the place she was banished to, it's likely Celestia is inclined to be pretty lenient in this matter.
    • Although Applejack didn't specifically learn a lesson, she was still reporting a lesson to the princess. It was something she had already known and still a good lesson in context of the episode, so it would have made a good report besides the first part.
• Twilight's Sanity Slippage in "Lesson Zero" really starts after her friends make light of her problem and even laugh at it a bit. Now remember what their "Discorded" selves did to her in "Return Of Harmony, Part 2" and what that did to poor Twilight. Imagine how it felt to an already very frustrated Twilight to have her friends laughing to her again after that and their innocent joking seems a lot less innocent.
• This is more of a fridge Tear Jerker than fridge horror, but think about Twilight's doll, Smarty Pants. When you consider that Twilight has such little knowledge of friendship, combined with the scenes in Lesson Zero of fillies laughing at her, it's quite possible that Smarty Pants was the closest thing Twilight had to a friend growing up.
  • Outside of her B.B.B.F.F., of course^note now that we're on the other side of season 2's finale.
    • In her "BBBFF" song, though, she says outright that she thought friendship was "silly", so maybe she just wasn't even all that interested in friendship? It would explain her line in the pilot, when she says saving Equestria does not revolve around her making friends.
• Twilight saw Fluttershy snap a bear's neck. And wasn't aware she was only giving it a massage. Uhh...
  • Come to think of it, I don't recall it ever being cleared up for Twilight just WHAT was happening. WE saw the whole thing, but it's possible that, ever since then, Twilight thinks she witnessed one of her sweetest, most kindly friends brutally murdering a bear for roaring in her face.
  • And worse still, what conclusion does Twilight reach after witnessing this? That Fluttershy has no problems whatsoever.
• Think about this. When's the first time we see Twilight ready to snap? When she's buying cupcakes for the party. Her report to Princess Celestia is nowhere near her conscious thought. Watch Cup Cake's reactions. And remember ... this is just buying ordinary baked goods.
• When Twilight flips, she starts using her magic for more or less everything, her random teleporting being the most notable. Imagine if, one day, she flips long-term. Twilight is one of the more powerful unicorns we've seen. All that power, totally out of control...
  • Given her unrivalled power (except for Celestia thus far) and tendency to crack under pressure, Twilight has at the very least the potential to become addicted to magic and turn dark and veiny and scary.
• The ability to Tele-Frag is canon. An unblockable, nearly-instantly-fatal magical attack. What if Twilight isn't the only one who can use it? Sweet dreams...
• Close to the beginning, Twilight uses her telekinesis to take a spatula off the wall and bring it over to fiddle with the cupcakes. The way the scene was done, it looked like she was telekinetically pulling a knife off the wall and trying to stab Mrs. Cake in the back of the head with it! Clearly, telekinesis and the right object can make a deadly combination.
• When we see the Cutie Mark Crusaders playing with the ball, there's a bush nearby that has a bird in its nest, chirping happily. When Twilight's head pops up, grinning manically, the bird is frozen in the nest, with a look of shock on its face. That bird does not move nor make a sound for the rest of the scene, and it WAS placed right where Twilight's horn would've been...
• Twilight's Sanity Slippage is due to the lack of Friendship Reports. Now, recall how she, and all of Equestria, was saved from Discord via those Friendship Reports. Suddenly she's justified. What if there's another villain who can be just as manipulative as Discord and they need Friendship Reports to save them?

Luna Eclipsed

• Twilight's reaction to Spike when Rainbow Dash pranks them with the lightning. We had just previously seen Spike scoffing down candy like there's no tomorrow, and he looks very much like he's choking to death on some of it. He even ends up unconscious and twitching. Twilight's only response is to put Spike on her back and walk on. This is pretty careless behavior given that she is supposed to be looking after him. He does turn out to be fine, but what if he had actually been choking? He might have died without Twilight even noticing.
  • Maybe dragon physiology doesn't allow them to actually choke?
    • Except that a later episode tells us that almost nothing is known about dragons, let alone their physiology, so even Twilight could easily assume that he's built similarly to ponies.
• While Nightmare Moon may have been stronger than Celestia, Luna is still a walking storm of magic AND has been officially reinstated as the equestrian princess of the night. Now, remember how everyone was behaving around Celestia in A Bird in the Hoof. To some ponies, Luna must be scarier than ever!
  • And Celestia almost never does anything scary, preferring to speak at normal volume, and rarely breaking out the weather effects. Modern ponies aren't used to even the Princesses coming in with clouds, lightning, and thunder and being all "CITIZENS OF PONYVILLE!" No wonder pretty much everypony was too terrified to do anything but lie on the ground, cover their eyes, and tremble.
• Luna being rejected by society and being afraid of her was what caused her to become Nightmare Moon in the first place. Kind of makes the scene where she snaps all the more frightening because she would be this close to relapsing into Nightmare Moon.

Sisterhooves Social

• "Sisterhooves Social", when Apple Bloom covers Applejack in smashed up grapes, Sweetie Belle's reaction is to panic and beg Applejack not to punish her. That almost comes off looking like the reaction of a child in an abusive home.
  • Or like a child living with a self-absorbed neat freak who would freak out at mess or dirt on her dress. While that's not a good thing in a guardian, it's certainly not abusive.
    • Rarity spent the entire day prior belittling Sweetie Belle and shouting at her for breaking rules Rarity never took the time to explain in the first place. That is absolutely abusive behavior, and certainly sufficient to traumatize an elementary-age child like Sweetie Belle.
• Or Rarity's reaction when she sees her parents eating the 'breakfast' that Sweetie had baked. Rather than a normal 'Mom! Dad!', she screams 'Father! Mother!' in an scared reaction. Okay, given the Drama Queen status of Rarity, you could say that this was a reaction that's normal when she sees her parents, but she said that in a very unsettling way. Just if she has been mistreated by them....
  • Rarity is a fancy pony. Maybe "Mom" and "Dad" just sounds too casual to her.
    • As before, it's more about the tone of voice than the word choice. Why would Rarity sound this scared of her parents? That's not the sound of a pony who's just surprised at unexpected company and upset over a mess in the kitchen.
• Rarity finding Sweetie Belle has elements of this. There's a blink and you miss it moment before she sees her were she looks truly worried and concerned, then is overjoyed to see her. She also said she'd been looking everywhere for her and started looking during the day and doesn't find her till later that night. This means Rarity spent a part of the day looking high and low for her baby sister with absolutely no idea where she is and knowing if anything happened to her, it'd be her fault for treating her as badly as she did.

The Cutie Pox

• When Twilight looks up the cure, she says that the disease disappears as mysteriously as it arrived. The Cutie Pox creates a random cutie mark and the infected is forced to perform the talent related to it and as Apple Bloom shows us, it can be anything to be able to perform tricks with a "Loopty Hoop" to speaking French to being a proficient fencer and no one is able to stop her. That is already frightening enough that Apple Bloom can't stop, but what happens if a more deadly Cutie Mark shows up? One that involves hurting possibly even killing the ponies around her? She'd be forced to perform THAT talent against her will! To add to that, why does the disease disappear as mysteriously as it arrived? If the above Fridge Horror is true, then no pony would be left to tell the tale if it does get that deadly. That or the ponies would be forced to kill the infected before it gets to that point.
  • Another thing: aren't you all forgetting how Apple Bloom was compelled to do everything the cutie marks represented? What if a sufferer of the Cutie Pox were to become tired from doing all those things simultaneously? What if the pox continued forcing the victim to carry on? If that's the case, then Apple Bloom was facing death by exhaustion! This is a frighteningly common way for horses to die if they are not taken care of properly (see Automaton Horses for more details).
  • Anyone who has heard the story of The Red Shoes probably had to pick their jaws off the floor when they saw Apple Bloom begging for help while dancing uncontrollably. And she was already becoming exhausted by the time Zecora showed up with the necessary herb to negate the Heart's Desire flower. If it had gone on for too much longer...
  • She might not even last long enough to die of exhaustion. If she could get marks that would make her harm other ponies, there's also the possibility of marks that would have forced her to harm herself, or to take risks that border on suicidal.
• The Cutie Pox, which gives the infected great skill with whatever action the obtained cutie marks describe, also results in a loss of control. Before this episode, there was no known cure. Way back when the strain was discovered, infected ponies must have ultimately died of exhaustion. With this in mind, all the citizens in Ponyville were completely justified in trying to avoid Apple Bloom, lest they were to catch it themselves.
  • The book says that the cutie pox disappeared as mysteriously as they appeared.
  • Per the book saying they vanished as mysteriously as they appeared, then maybe the Heart's Desire had a bumper crop bloom that year and they dug them all up for Green Apple Acres or some other construction project, so there hasn't been enough of the flower to cause the problem again.
    • The reason the Heart's Desire flower gave Apple Bloom cutie pox symptoms was because she really really wanted her cutie mark. The original outbreak would have only been caused by that if every pony had eaten that flower and their heart's deepest desire was to get a cutie mark, which seems unlikely. Therefore, while the flower was the cause of Apple Bloom's case, true cutie pox still has no known cure.
  • Story of the Blanks suddenly has an easily applicable backstory; maybe the other ponies even considered what they did to Ruby a Mercy Kill.
    • Even better, considering what Apple Bloom went through with the blanks, her desire for a cutie mark might be stronger just to -not- be like those ponies in Sunnytown. And also, the story of Cutie Pox might have a much deeper impact on her than say Applejack or Twilight, because she encountered a relic possibly from the days of Cutie Pox. And so would understand why ponies of Sunnytown did what they did.
  • The Cutie Pox is very similar to a disease called "The Dancing Fever". If you think humans can't get infected by a disease that eventually kills you from exhaustion, think again. More information about it can be found on The Other Wiki here.
• In Cutie Pox, after Apple Bloom starts getting more depressed over not getting her cutie mark, she wanders into Everfree Forest...why would she go in there? Considering how dangerous the place is considered and how sad she was, it's possible she was giving up on life.
• Some of the ponies in Ponyville have hazmat suits. Why exactly would they need those?
  • Crazy-Prepared. And it's Ponyville.
• My Little Lebowski becomes unsettling when you realize that the Cutie Mark Crusaders, along with a number of other young'uns, are in the same bowling alley as a stallion who is likely a foal-mounter. As if there weren't enough fear in the episode already.
• Scootaloo and the bowling ball incident. Sure, she didn't hit anyone this time, but if there's a next time, she could cave somepony's skull in.

May the Best Pet Win!

• Rainbow Dash names her new pet tortoise Tank, because he's "built like a tank." You know, not the container for fluids, the armored vehicle. Although this is a good name, it implies the existence of mechanized warfare in Equestria.
• At the end of the song, Derpy peers out from the chicken coop. While it's meant to be an Easter Egg for the fans, it does looks suspiciously like Derpy's stalking either Rainbow Dash or Fluttershy. Or she enjoys lurking in chicken coops. Either way pretty creepy when you think about it.
• Rainbow Dash, pretty much alone among the mane six, will lose her special talent as she ages. Applejack, in her old age, will not be able to work very much on Sweet Apple Acres herself, but, because it is a family business, and because she is part of an extended clan of apple farmers, she will probably end her days much like Granny Smith is now: as a respected matriarch surrounded by ponies who love and respect her. Fluttershy will in all likelihood be able to maintain her special connection with animals as she ages; she'll probably need more physical help caring for them, but she'll still be surrounded by the woodland creatures she loves and who love her, and she'll still have her special connection to them. Pinkie Pie will probably lose some of her youthful exuberance as she ages, but even in her old age, she'll still be able to make other ponies happy by throwing celebrations for them, even if she needs more help putting up decorations, sending out invitations, and other physical aspects of what she does. Rarity will still be able to find and bring out the beauty in things, even if she can't work at the pace she does now; she probably won't be able to make multiple dresses in a single night, but she'll still be able to create beautiful things from common objects. At the very least, her talent for finding gems in rocks will at least help ensure that she will be well-provided for. Twilight Sparkle will remain a brilliant scholar and powerful wizard; in fact, her knowledge and thus power are likely only to grow as she learns more over time. But Rainbow Dash, well, Rainbow Dash is going to lose her speed as she grows old; there's really no avoiding that. Unlike the other five, her special talent is almost purely physical; granted, her great speed itself is at least to some extent a product of her competitive drive and ambition, but that will probably make the diminution of her physical prowess that much harder to bear. Now consider this: tortoises usually live very long lives, meaning that Tank will likely still be around when Rainbow is old. In fact, the day may come when Tank is faster than Rainbow. In a way, it's somewhat comforting, although still melancholic, to imagine Tank once again carrying Dash on his back.
  • Not necessarily true. There's still the possibility Rainbow will die young in a daredevil stunt gone wrong.
    • Then again, it's entirely possible that Rainbow Dash would prefer to go out in a blaze of glory.
  • Perhaps not, though. While Rainbow's talent is never exactly defined, it could well be more than just flying really fast. While Rainbow will probably lose her speed as she ages, she still has other options, such as being a flight coach or similar.
  • Her personality isn't based just around being a great flyer, it's about just being generally great. She's highly competitive when it comes to pretty much everything, even board games. As such, she'd probably take quite well to being a Cool Old Lady who is looked up to by younger ponies. No doubt she'd have lots of cool stories to tell. Think Granny Smith's presentation in the school, but even more awesome (and with a few embellishments; this is RD we're talking about). "...and I saved the world from eternal night, and I kicked a dragon in the face, and I saved the Wonderbolts, and I defeated the spirit of chaos, and I fought off an army of changelings..."
• When Applejack points out that there's been an avalanche in the valley, for a moment just before Pinkie and Fluttershy spot Tank with Rainbow Dash in tow they have no idea what happened. For all they know, Rainbow Dash could've been crushed under the rocks. In this light, Applejack's fear and urgency take on a much darker tone. It's even worse if you consider that, from this perspective, that she may not have been immediately killed, but badly broken, suffering great pain as she slowly suffocates.

The Mysterious Mare Do Well

• The sheer number of accidents happening around Ponyville in a brief period of time. Is this normal? Does this sort of thing happen every day just off-screen? And why the hell does Ponyville even need a steep downhill road leading to a sheer cliff?
  • Fridge Brilliance: it's for the Pegasi carriages to land on and take off.
• What happened to the driver of the runaway bus? Somepony had to have been pulling it.
  • Went inside a shop to get coffee, and forgot to put the parking brake on?
• On a different tangent. What the hell was that horrifying balloon Dash in the CMC clubhouse all about?
• Rainbow Dash had every opportunity to make trouble so she could play the hero. But she didn't. So this just proves how unstable Twilight truly is.
  • She dragged Granny Smith across a street against her will. Rainbow Dash wouldn't knowingly make trouble for somepony, but between her arrogance and disinclination to think things through, she could still make quite a nuisance out of herself. Heck, if she'd gone to tell somepony about the crack in the dam, it could have been fixed without breaking in the first place (though this is a debatable example because the dam was a scant ten seconds from failing).
    • The dam thing isn't so debatable once you notice that the dam didn't break until after Rainbow tried to stop it. A crack in the wall being hit by something hard (like a hoof, for example) is very likely to weaken it and make the crack bigger. And Rainbow Dash isn't exactly a weak pony, either. There's a good chance that the dam would have held out long enough to be fixed, but she accidentally broke it instead.
• The various ponies around Ponyville find themselves in some pretty tense situations throughout the episode, luckily Rainbow Dash and later the Mare Do Well are there to save them. Speaking of that, why does nopony else help?! There are several pegasi in the crowds just watching and doing nothing to help the ponies that are in danger! What gives?
  • The bystander effect.
• If you think about it, Rainbow Dash could kinda be considered a sadist in this episode. She saves people JUST so she can brag. If she couldn't brag about it, would she just let them die/get injured? And speaking of that little filly, it seems that the well was very deep, since it took several seconds for Rainbow Dash to get to her even when flying very quickly. How did the little filly get down there in the first place? Granted, she didn't seem hurt, amazingly from such a depth, but still...
  • I'm pretty sure Rainbow Dash would NOT have let them just die because she wasn't getting attention from it. She's a show-off, but she's still a good pony at heart, not to mention the Element of Loyalty. The episode implies that Dash has saved ponies a couple of times before, and the first filly she saved, she wasn't looking for attention, she just did it because it's the right thing to do.
• Even though some people think the mane cast overreacted to Rainbow's bragging, if you pay attention, you realize that most of the ponies the Mare-Do-Well saves in all likelyhood would've died thanks to her showboating if she hadn't. Worse: the Mare Do Well appearances were clearly producing the opposite of their intended reaction. Rainbow Dash was getting more and more desperate for people's admiration. We see her start looking for the most trivial of problems to solve. And as we've seen before, the line between looking for problems and making problems seems pretty thin for ponies.
  • Rainbow does relatively little showboating at the construction site. She does try to say her catchphrase a few times and keeps getting interrupted by falling debris, but she'd kind of have to be dodging that anyway. Nothing at the construction site was her fault, though for some reason the scene's shot as if she were to blame for, among other things, the building collapsing.
• One fan comic pointed out that there may be more than a few brokenhearted little ponies who'd started to hero-worship Mare Do Well only to find out the hero was just a trick some ponies were playing on their boastful friend. Mare Do Well is shown to be even more popular than Dash at the height of her popularity, this had to have happened in at least a couple of cases.
  • Or maybe something worse...
• And that's assuming they do reveal themselves. Just imagine how much trouble Rainbow Dash is going to be in when it looks like she chased off Ponyville's greatest hero...
• Where the HELL was the Pony equivalent of OSHA? Seriously, so many disasters, so many crumbling/damaged structures, why has the town not been condemned yet? Couple this with the obviously crumbling city hall in "The Last Roundup," and Ponyville really starts to look ramshackle and unsafe. How many ponies have been hurt or killed due to structural damage?
• Think about what Rainbow's friends did specifically to Rainbow. Yes, she had to learn a lesson. Yes, if they talked to her, she probably wouldn't have listened. But think about the kind of pony Rainbow is. Rainbow, as a matter of fact, was in character the entire time. Rainbow is a pony who hates losing, big time. Somepony who sees her fame as her life. She was constantly losing, and being dethroned. More and more losing and less and less positive fame. Throw in merciless teasing by her closest friends and hypocrisy, and I believe Rainbow would be beyond her breaking point. If this wasn't a kid's show, I think she would have at least hurt herself during this episode, if not a suicide attempt, even more so after the end. I'm surprised she didn't break down in tears in this episode.

Sweet and Elite

• It has Rarity lying to her friends about her cat being sick, and drenching the cat in hot water to maintain that lie. What does it suggest about her priorities when she would rather drench her own cat than be honest with her own friends?
  • Not anything that being on the verge of tears when two ponies insulted her social status didn't already. This begets more Fridge Horror, though: It implies that Rarity's sense of self-worth is so deeply tied to her social standing she's willing to hurt herself and her friends so she doesn't lose face. Does that mean that her personality is an an elaborate mask to hide how worthless she feels? And what's more, how did she get like this?
  • Coupling these troubled signs with how Sweetie Belle reacts to Applejack and Apple Bloom about to fight and the whole "it doesn't have to be physical to be abuse" mantra...One has to wonder if they're parents are really as nice as they seem. There could be a very good reason why Sweetie is living with her big sister instead of their parents.
    • Does Sweetie Belle actually live with Rarity? I thought she was just visiting Rarity in Sisterhooves Social and we saw her (and her parent's) home in One Bad Apple?
    • She officially lives with their parents, but seems to spend a lot of time at Rarity's, enough to have sort of her own room there too.
    • They're so nice to her that she doesn't even realize that the things she cooks are coming out impossibly bad. (Then again, they don't seem to realize it, either.)

Secret of My Excess

• Spike is going to have to grow up eventually.
  • Spike has shown to have different "adult" forms though, one being magically induced and the other part of an imagine spot. There's no guarantee his natural adult self will be the same as this greedy version. As long as they help quell his hoarding tendencies, one would expect his growth to be more manageable.
  • Jossed; "Molt Down" confirmed that "greed-induced bigness" is a separate phenomenon from normal dragon growth.
• After watching this episodes, it makes one wonder if the two dragons from previous episodes might have been nice dragons just like Spike but were consumed by their greed, having nopony to help them with it.
  • Except they don't go as far as Spike did in this episode. He loses the ability to speak coherently or be reasoned with. The adult dragons we see - while possessive and potentially dangerous - can be reasoned with and the one in Owl's Well that Ends Well actually says quite a bit to Spike before concluding he wants to attack the baby for trespassing on his lair. And there's not much wrong with the serpent one in the pilot episodes (making it the second time generosity and beauty (the ruby, the serpent liking Rarity's replacement moustache) has calmed a dragon).
    • Spike was actually more reasonable than either of them. The Main Six only managed to talk the red dragon down after Fluttershy stared him into submission, and while his actions can be mostly explained by him just wanting to sleep and protect his horde, he started trying to kill them after a very minor injury. The green dragon gave a Spike a chance to talk, but he still went to using fire breath over the theft of a tiny amount of jewels and some empty talk. By contrast, Spike never went on the offensive, and even after the Wonderbolts managed to injure him, he still used non-lethal force to disable them. And while he never spoke in his adult form, his reactions to Rainbow, Fluttershy, and Rarity showed that he could understand them just fine. Finally, Rarity did talk him down, without using any form of coercion beyond her words.
    • Dragons can live for thousands of years. Maybe Twilight is working from the assumption that he won't grow up in her lifetime, so he'll be someone else's problem.
• Ponyville has an air raid siren. Why in Equestria would they need one of those?
  • Ponyville generally falls somewhere between Crazy-Prepared and Properly Paranoid in terms of handling emergencies. But maybe it was installed during the fifties, it would explain the cute lil' hazmat suits from "The Cutie Pox".
    • It could also be used for heavy weather, if something happened with it that Cloudsdale couldn't handle.
    • Genius Bonus below suggests it's what summons the Wonderbolts.
    • The town is built on the border of the Everfree forest, one of, if not the, most dangerous places in all of Equestria. It makes sense for such a town to have some way of alerting the population to trouble coming.
    • There's also the fact that they've suffered attacks from two Mad Gods, the Parasprites, and an Ursa Minor. It makes sense they'd have a warning system of some type in place.
    • It might actually be for the specific purpose of dragon attacks. We know that at least one lives in the Everfree Forest, after all.
• Two ponies bump into each other in panic. They're stunned for a second and then just barely dodge a stomp from Spike's giant claw. It frightens this troper to think that there was a second's difference between two ponies being alive, or killed by a character who we know and love.
• Sugar Cube Corner has been destroyed and Pinkie's bed room launched over the horizon while Pinkie sits in shocked silence... So where's Gummy and Mr. and Mrs. Cake?
  • At the hospital.
• The episode is based around Spike growing through greed. But what stops him from reverting to his greedy ways once all his friends are gone?
  • Memories of his friends? There's one very sad comic showing just this somewhere.
  • As mentioned above, "greed-induced bigness" is a separate phenomenon from normal dragon growth.
• If Twilight and Ponyville were ignorant of just what might come of giving their baby dragon a nice birthday party, what else are they unaware of? Having a rampaging monster is bad enough, but if/once Spike goes through dragon puberty properly (as opposed to the accelerated, warped one we see in 'Secret of My Excess') they'll likely end up with a whole host of other issues. Not to mention that flame breath of his turning from 'cute' to 'major fire hazard'.
  • We see him going through dragon puberty in later episode, and it isn't as catastrophic like speculated above.
• Spike can either grow up instantly and be a gigantic, vicious, rampaging monster, or he can grow up naturally and see his pony friends die while he's still going through puberty. Considering how long the average pony lives, Twilight won't be able to see Spike as a fully mature adult dragon.
  • Another thought, it is shown Greed makes dragons age rapidly, but never states to what point it stops or if it even does. How old may Spike have grown if they hadn't been able to stop him in time? Heck even without the concern of age, just how gigantic and feral could a dragon potentially evolve in that manner?
    • It's eventually established that the growth from greed is not a dragon's natural growth so none of the above is really a problem anymore.
• The episode ends with the conclusion Spike will not age during his friends life as he'll become hard to handle. This is despite the fact that is a dragons natural behavior and is supposed to happen. The whole thing comes off similar to a human trying to tame a wild animal at the cost of its own well-being.
  • Except that it's not natural behaviour, at least not the way it happened here. Remember Spike only aged so rapidly from getting so many birthday presents, which is definitely not something that occurs naturally.
    • The 'Molt Down' confirms that "greed induced bigness" isn't natural way for dragons to age.
  • Another comparison might be to a human keeping a cute baby wild animal as an exotic pet, only for said exotic pet to become increasingly aggressive when it grows up due to its natural instincts, with the end result often being that it attacks someone and has to be put down. In real life, Travis was a chimpanzee raised from infancy by his human owners and lived happily and peacefully with them for 13 years, but flipped out and mauled his owner's friend when he saw her holding one of his favorite toys, forcing the police to shoot him (although it's been suggested that his aggression that day was the result of his owner giving him a tea with Xanax in it).
• After watching this episodes, it makes one wonder if the two dragons from previous episodes might have been nice dragons just like Spike but were consumed by their greed and had nopony to help them with it. The one from the pilot was befriended the same way too; generosity.
  • The questions to this were answered earlier above in the thread.
• Two ponies bump into each other in panic. They're stunned for a second and then just barely dodge a stomp from Spike's giant claw. It frightens this troper to think that there was a second's difference between two ponies being alive, or killed by a character who we know and love.
• The episode is based around Spike growing through greed. What stops him from reverting to his greedy ways once all his friends are gone?
  • Spike is constantly making new friends wherever he goes so that kind of situation is unlikely to arise unless something destroys Equestria.
• The doctor of Ponyville knows nothing about dragons: what if Spike really gets sick?
  • Twilight will find a way. Either by contacting adult dragons, traveling to a city where they know more about dragons, emptying every library en every city in Equestria... etc. Besides, she has the finest team in Equestria to help her.
    • Then again... Twilight will find a way.
    • They now have a potential dragon contact. Maybe a good source of information.
• Will Spike have to grow up eventually? Could the ponies around him, if they chose, prevent him from being overcome by greed and keep him small for the rest of his days? And even if they have the ability, do they have the right? How would Spike feel about essentially being a bonsai dragon, his growth carefully suppressed so that he can fit in the place somepony decided he should be kept?
  • It's eventually established that the growth from greed is not a dragon's natural growth so none of the above is really a problem anymore.

Family Appreciation Day

• A lot of the jokes surrounding Granny Smith go from being sorta kooky more to some form of dementia. When you realize just how incredibly old this episode makes her^note assuming this episode does not Retcon Winter Wrap Up in any way, Granny Smith is about three to four hundred years old, as opposed to the thirty-year Real Life horse lifespan Faust had originally envisioned the series with, you have to wonder if some of her behavior really is senility. And how many more years she has.
  • Although it's probably a lot better than the alternative. If Granny really is a few centuries old, then she's had a damn good innings, and who's to say she hasn't got decades more in her? The horrifying thing would be if ponies didn't live a lot longer than their real world counterparts; if Granny were that aged and decrepit at only 30, it would be tragic.
    • Is she just gonna keep going until she looks like pony Yoda?

Baby Cakes

• At one point we see Pumpkin Cake using her magic to easily walk through the basket that Pinkie Pie had trapped her and Pound under. What if Pumpkin decides to take up a life of crime later? Or becomes a serial killer?!
  • Although that seems highly unlikely coming from this kind of series, it does bring up some unsettling fears: Since Pumpkin can walk through the basket using her magic, what's going to stop her from getting into something dangerous? Like the Drain-O in the sink cabinet, the deadly sharp silverware in the kitchen drawer, or the stash of "Equestria After Dark" magazines Mr. Cake hides in his closet?
    • Or going through walls, including going outside through them? Her bedroom better be on the ground floor.
    • It isn't. Pinkie Pie comes to greet the Cakes by the top of the stairs after having put the babies to sleep. The Cakes then climb the stairs to check up on the babies.
    • Since it's common for baby unicorns to have magic surges, maybe there's some sort of commercially available anti-magic device that Pumpkin's parents can put on her or in her room. There's also the Fledgling's Forbearance spell.
• As mentioned above, we learn that infant unicorns sometimes have powerful magic surges that fade as they grow up. So that probably means that the difficulties that Pinkie had with Pumpkin Cake in this episode are not uncommon for the caregivers of infant unicorns, especially those caregivers who are not unicorns themselves. But now consider the altogether likely possibility that the strength and frequency of an infant unicorn's magic surges are a function of that unicorn's full magical potential as an adult, that is, that a unicorn with very strong natural magical aptitude is likely to have many and powerful surges as an infant. Now imagine what Twilight Sparkle must have been like as an infant. Imagine how difficult it must have been for her parents to care for her while also preventing her from destroying them, herself, or the surrounding city block. Do you think the kind of upbringing Twilight must have had as an infant might have anything to do with her neuroses today?
  • This brings up some Fridge Brilliance when the Season 2 finale rolls around: if Twilight was uberpowerful as an infant it makes a lot more sense that she's have an alicorn for a babysitter. It also helps that her brother's special talent is large magical shields.
    • Sunset Shimmer is implied to have been a unicorn near or equal to Twilight's level of power, but there was no reason to believe she recieved the same level of supervision. Perhaps that's why she became such a jerk, because she was used to being able to take whatever she wanted by force.
  • Also, Twilight's not the only victim, here. Rainbow Dash is also VERY sensitive about her aerobatics, and does everything she can to prove them to herself and the world every chance she gets. She can also fly fast enough to shatter the light spectrum, producing an explosion powerful enough to break rocks and demolish buildings. Her parents may have had to strap Baby Dashie's wings down to keep her from Rainbooming the house apart. (HOWEVER! They never say in the episode if pegasi have bursts of flight, similar to unicorns and magic, or not.)
    • Though it is shown multiple times that Scootaloo, who is much older than Pound Cake, cannot yet fly, so it is entirely possible that Pound Cake will lose the ability to fly once he starts gaining weight, to only regain it when he gets older.
    • Unless Scootaloo is such a weak pegasus that she will never be able to fly normally. Maybe a result of genetic instability? We've only ever seen her hovering for a couple of seconds, and she spends all her time in Ponyville with no family in sight...
  • Another thing is that Pound Cake is one month old and he can already fly to the point that he can speed around a house while carrying a pony several times his size and weight. If this is just a fraction of what he'll be able to do, he might be outdoing Rainbow Dash when he's older. If Baby Dashie had to have her wings tied, ask yourself: What's faster than a sonic rainboom? Now apply that to Pound Cake. Now factor in Pound Cake's name. He already likes to "pound" things. Sooner or later, he's going to figure out that faster speeds equal harder pounding on things. Here's to hoping he never thinks to try pounding the ground at supersonic speed.
• At the end of "Baby Cakes", neither twin has a diaper on before the go to sleep. It's more than likely they'll "make lemonade" or "boom-boom" not too long after.
• When Pinkie is looking for Pound Cake about halfway through the episode, the house is dark and the only sound other than Pinkie is Pumpkin Cake with the rubber chicken. The window is also open. Suddenly Pinkie hears a whispered "Pinkie..." followed by laughter. It's frightening because she can't see that Pound Cake is flying above her, and up until that moment neither of the twins had ever spoken before. So to her there's an unknown disembodied voice of an intruder in a dark house whispering her name and laughing while she frantically searches for a missing child.
• Another thing with Baby Cakes, the Cakes, Earth Ponies, have Unicorn and Pegasus children. in Hearth's Warming Eve, we see that the Pegasi, Earth Ponies, and Unicorns where all hostile towards each other. what happened when, say, a Unicorn gave birth to a Pegasus? They would either be killed or banished, which would be VERY bad for the young pony in question. Or, the whole thing was just a case of mistaken identity with the the little ponies. Which is not a whole lot better.
  • It's possible the races never, or rarely mixed before then, as they loathed each other. Since Mr. Cake explained that there were unicorns and pegasi in his family tree (or both his and Mrs. Cake's?), thus providing the possibility that the genes needed to be present to allow for it to even happen. Not to mention, any pony not fitting the society may have just been cast out to live in the "proper" society.
• If recessive genes can cause Earth pony parents to have a pegasus or unicorn foal, can a pegasus or unicorn have an Earth pony foal? What happens to such a baby born in Cloudsdale? Alternatively, is a non-unicorn going to be mocked and considered a genetic throwback in a unicorn society?
  • Very doubtful. Perhaps back in the old days before Equestria was founded this could be a problem but in the Sugar Bowl that is modern Equestria this kind of pony "racism" would be absurd. An earth pony would be able to live among unicorns without any problem (remember that Canterlot - the most high class city shown - has plenty of earth ponies in high positions). For an non-pegasus born in Cloudsdale, there may be creative solutions we haven't seen. Or maybe in such an instance the parents would simply move to a different town - a normal sacrifice loving parents are expected to make in such a situation. That or they just simply chuck the babies down to the earth below.
  • Which brings up a bit of Fridge Brilliance when you think of Hearths Warming Eve. The tribes before Equestria were pretty much, trade with, but don't mingle, or marry anyone from the other tribes.
• Imagine what will happen in the twins' minds when Mr. or Mrs. Cake discusses baking a pound or pumpkin cake in front of Pound or Pumpkin Cake. Those kids will probably be given nicknames as a workaround...
  • It's not as though this episode invented the concept of food names. I've never heard of a real child being traumatized by this kind of thing.
  • The Cakes deal in baked goods, such as cupcakes and - possibly - carrot cakes. Considering their NAMES are Cup Cake and Carrot Cake, it's probably no big deal. Nothing they can't explain to their own kids. Besides, consider how awkward it would be for half the Apple family...
    • See Applejack feeling like she has to specify that she means the foodstuff, and not her aunt. Even though it would be really strange if she did mean her aunt. (Could've just been an awkward joke on her part, though.)
  • Rugrats had an episode about this. It'd likely cause more awkward humor mixed with mild fear than trauma. The twins would learn quickly.
• The general theory about Scootaloo not being able to fly is that she's simply not old enough yet, which fits with the whole still-growing-up concept of the CMCs. Except Pound Cakes is a flight-capable newborn, which suggests flight is something Scootaloo should be able to do by now, but can't. This makes her scooting look more like wheelchair basketball. This also makes her friends teasing her about her flightlessness look a lot more cruel.
  • Since Sweetie Belle can't use magic while Pumpkin Cake clearly can, it's implied Pound Cake is having a "pegasus magic" spurt, and will lose his flight after about a year and then regain it during, say, tail end of puberty. After all, Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash were admitted to Flight Camp at an age where Fluttershy is clearly having a growth spurt.
    • Except for the fact that we've now had season 4's Flight to the Finish, which confirms there's something nebulously "wrong" with Scootaloo's flight abilities.

Hearth's Warming Eve

• What happened to all the other ponies that were left behind by the tribal leaders? Worst case scenario: They continued bickering while the leaders were gone, and suffered from the same Harmless Freezing that they (briefly) did.
  • Note that Private Pansy claims to hate Commander Hurricane a lot more than she hates the other two species, and she, Clover, and Smart Cookie all state they don't hate each other. It may be that the hatred between the tribes was something that was created and enforced by the commanders, and that many or even most ponies didn't really feel strongly one way or the other. With their leaders gone, they might actually have learned to get along.
• We see that the leaders of the unicorns, pegasi, and earth ponies had personalities similar - if not completely identical - to Rarity, Rainbow Dash, and Pinkie Pie respectively. The leaders of entire races. Imagine if your entire race depended on someone like Pinkie. Or Rarity. Or Rainbow Dash. We see how the races eventually get better, but what about before that? How do you think life went for ponies who had to live under that kind of rule?
  • Actually, if Pinkie ever becomed a ruler in any shape or form, she could be the one of the The Good King variety, given her cheerful nature; not to mention she puts Mean Character, Nice Actor gimmick when playing Chancellor Puddinghead. Going by this, it makes Chancellor Puddinghead more similar to King Julien than Pinkie Pie, and given how Julien usually treats Mort and Maurice... then yeah, we should be glad that she Took a Level in Kindness after being unfrozen by the Fire Of Friendship.
• Also in "Hearth's Warming Eve", the main antagonists are Windigos. Traditionally, Windigos are the spirit of Cannibalism from the Native American Algonquian people. It was said that people caught in a blizzard would be possessed by the Windigo, and eat their companions, which would make them into a Windigo themselves. Meaning if the ponies hadn't made peace, they would have ate each other.
• The Hearth's Warming Eve pageant has a happy ending, with the three tribes coming together in harmony. However, at the beginning, it's noted that this took place long before the rule of Celestia and Luna. In "Return of Harmony", Celestia notes that she and Luna began their reign after they deposed Discord. The play may have a happy ending, but they eventually are taken over by Discord after founding their new land. And not all that much later, considering that Luna remembers Star Swirl The Bearded, who was mentioned in the pageant.
• Living in harmony gives Wendigos nothing to eat; presumably they starve to death in times of peace.
  • Not really true as the end implies they are still around. Which is a new Fridge Horror.
  • Given that they're spirits feeding probably isn't a matter of survival to them.
  • The winter that the Wendigos cause was so strong that it cause a famine. If the ponies would be so desperate for food they might be force to eat each other. This hold some weight as Wendigos in myths represents cannibalism.
  • There's also the fact their winter got worse and worse as the hatred between the ponies grew. What would've happened if they hadn't be stopped?!
    • They all become a big block o' ice as demonstrated.
• Okay; so what about the villages of ponies we saw earlier? They're suddenly forgotten about. Maybe they're just seen as a minor plot point but did the rest of the inhabitants of the land starve?
  • Presumably the defeat of the Wendigos freed them from the winter and the leaders went back to fetch the rest of their respective races so as to bring them to the newly formed Equestria.
  • The disappearance of background ponies coincides with the introduction of Private Pansy, Clover the Clever and Smart Cookie...right before the journey to Equestria. Notice how Spike keeps talking about "the tribes" in his narration. Whoever directed the play probably decided that three anonymous masses in movement could as well be represented by three actors.
    • Thematically the leader and adviser of each tribe each represents each of the two forces at play in the conflict. There are the ponies that wallow in hate and distrust, and there are the ponies that are tired of fighting and just want to live their lives. Hence two ponies are all you need from each tribe in order to effectively outline the conflict.
• The ending heavily implies that if the races ever began fighting again, the Wendigo would return. Between them, Discord and negative emotions apparently capable of transforming people into Evil Overlords (i.e Nightmare Moon) , it seems that in the world of ponies, friendship isn't so much a voluntary virtue as it is a survival mechanism.
  • Since the ending is very much played for laughs, it may be just that someone accidentally used whatever made the Wendigo roar sounds during the play.
    • Or intentionally used it to break up the argument. In any event, Rarity and Applejack get into a big fight in Look Before You Sleep without any sign of Windigo return.
• The events of the play take place before the rule of Celestia and Luna. Celestia and Luna came into power when they defeated Discord. And Luna knew Star Swirl the Bearded who was Clover the Clever's mentor. Which means that some time not too long after their happy ending, the newly-christened Equestria was set upon by Discord and plunged it into an unending nightmare of chaos and suffering.
  • Luna Eclipsed showed Luna knew of Star Swirl...not necessarily that she knew him.
  • She knew him well enough to know that Twilight had "even gotten the bells right". Of course Luna herself might only have seen pictures of him with his bells but I prefer to think that she met him herself.
    • Twilight was able to get the bells right, so it doesn't seem like it's something so obscure that it would require personal knowledge of the pony to recognize.
  • Maybe Star Swirl's robe is preserved somewhere in Canterlot...perhaps in a museum or the palace.
    • Like I said, "not necessarily". But the claim is not absolute proof either way
    • Given the events of 'Shadow Play', the theory that Star Swirl's robe is in museum is jossed.
• If you think about it, Chancellor Puddinghead is not unlike The Caligula. She is very much insane (that wasn't good-natured Pinkie's wackiness we've seen in the play), but also convinced she's the smartest person around and won't let anyone tell her otherwise. It's also she that escalates the final argument that makes the Wendigos freeze the cave. None of the pony leaders were exactly nice people, but Puddinghead's rule might have been quite nightmarish for the earth ponies.
  • Gets even worse when you remember that Chancellor Puddinghead in contrast with the other two leaders was elected.
  • Which may mean the other candidates were even worse!
  • Well...guy wanted his horse in charge and this is what happens.
• Related to the Fridge Brilliance on Wendigos: it's also said of the mythical Wendigo that if one were to indulge in cannibalism, they'd become a Wendigo. What would've happened to those hateful ponies had they continued to indulge in animosity...?
• So assuming that making friends is a survival tactic in the Equestria of yore, what happens to the social misfits who don't fit in?
  • They wander the land until they find a place they do fit in. Perhaps even as Wendigos themselves.
• We now have a new one. Princess Platinum is described as the "daughter of the Unicorn King." Who's the only unicorn king we know of as of Series 3? Sombra. (Yes, the events depicted in the play take place before Celestia and Luna were in power, but if you take the theory that Discord's rule happened soon after into account...)
  • Considering the 6 look so similar to the Mane 6 and perhaps ancestors (not saying they are, perhaps even in the flashback its still all a play and it's simply coincidental) and if Platinum's father was Sombra... Does this mean Rarity would be the ancestor of SOMBRA!?!?
    • This is paranoid. The timelines make no sense. We'd have to found Equestria, have Discord take over, subject the population to an eternity of chaos, have the Princesses find and use the EOH, and either in the meantime or the aftermath have the King of the Unicorns take over the Crystal Empire. The only way this makes any sense would be if the King of the Unicorns could cast Age Magic. Though... if he had the Alicorn Amulet, we might have something that could work.
  • Meet King Bullion.
• A retroactive one thanks to My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Rainbow Rocks. We don't know how long the Dazzlings have been around before being banished to the Human world. Were they present when the Windigos were around? And if they were, did they feed from the hate between the pony races? Or did they cause the ponies to hate each other?

The Last Roundup

• When Pinkie Pie thinks that Applejack has broken a Pinkie Promise, she turns nearly...demonic. She has a second voice layered under her own and her attitude goes from happy to furious in literally Ten Seconds Flat. Yes, she's happy again when she Applejack tells her that she didn't lie, just found a way out of the promise, but what's happened in the past to ponies who really broke their Pinkie Promises? Is that why everyone takes them so seriously?
  • Moreover, Pinkie's cartoony nature gives her some incredible abilities. She can move at incredible speeds, teleport, be in multiple places at once, appear anywhere (including inside mirrors), break the fourth wall^note Word of God denies this ability, but fans have pointed out that Pinkie has already done so in canon anyway, whip up complex gadgets in a short span of time, etc. If you break a Pinkie Promise, it's impossible to run from, hide from, or stop her wrath.
  • Keep all that in mind while watching "Green Isn't Your Color" and note how Pinkie shows up whenever it seems Twilight's gonna break her Pinkie Promise. If she feels inclined to, she can follow you anywhere to make sure you don't break one, like she did with Twilight. Now think about The Last Roundup, and let the title of this vid sink in...
• Rainbow Dash is perfectly content with leaving Rarity and Pinkie stranded in the middle of the desert. This is a hot, dry landscape barren of any food, water or civilization. She and rest of Ponyville (including the other three of the Mane Six) make no effort to retrieve them or even notice they're gone. If they hadn't found the mine cart it's likely the two would have suffered days of agony and exhaustion before finally succumbing to dehydration.
  • It gets even worse for Rarity when you realize she would die listening to Pinkie Pie's insane ramblings (which had previously been shown to be an effective form of torture against Applejack).
    • Now imagine if they had all gone home together, with all of them having to listen to her...
  • Rarity and Pinkie getting separated becomes even more horrifying factoring in how it happens in the first place. Pinkie carelessly jumps from Applejack's cart and crashes into Rarity, sending the both of them tumbling to the ground. When you realize they were chasing Applejack at pretty high speeds, the impact of the two ponies colliding and hitting the ground could have gotten Rarity and Pinkie seriously injured with no access to a hospital for miles. It's made even worse when Rainbow Dash dissuades Fluttershy and Twilight from stopping to at least see if they're all right.
• Spike wasn't at Applejack's welcome home Party. Which is okay, he was probably busy at the time. But then you realize, Twilight had left for about two days, with the others to go look for Applejack, and we never see her stop by the library to pack, or tell Spike, her number one assistant, and friend, any of this. Which means, she may have just left him there for two days straight worrying about where they are, and they're too preoccupied with bringing Applejack home to even worry about it. You can only imagine how worried he must be at the library.
• Applejack treated her friends very coldly when they came looking for her, and it's not hard to imagine why: She did not win any prize money at the rodeo, and she had promised her prize money to fix the town hall. We aren't shown how the rodeo went, but are shown that she won a lot of second, third, and runner-up medals. Now, imagine Applejack's mental state as she comes close to winning each event, but falls short each time: she feels the disappointment of her friends and the mayor building up as she keeps failing to win the prize money she promised. The stress and guilt are building and building in her mind as each event goes by, and the perceived source of all this stress is her friends and their disappointment. It's no wonder she's cold to them: to her—-subconsciously—-her friends are the reason she feels terrible about not winning any prize money. So when an opportunity presents itself for her to work someplace far from Ponyville to earn the money, she takes the offer: it gives her a chance to make good on her perceived commitments—-and puts a lot of distance between her and the source of her stress: her friends.
  • Even worse: Twilight was the only one not to put that much pressure on her ("Just do your best.") and then she scuttles that ("Ah'm gonna do better than my best!") so even that exchange isn't immune from causing her stress.
• The alterations to Derpy become unsettling when you see A Canterlot Wedding and observe the changelings. Heck, it even gets pointed out in the comics!

The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000

• The Flim-Flam Brothers machine sucking up the entire apple tree, roots and all. Sucking up entire trees that could of have house squirrels and bird nested that might have baby bird eggs. And the thought of those poor animals getting crush to make cider is a sickening thought.
  • Good thing Pegasi never sleep in trees.
    • It would certainly help explain why the resulting cider was absolutely disgusting.
    • Sleep? What pegasus could sleep in those trees when the contest to decide cider rights would be happening just a few yards away?
• By the end of the episode, Sweet Apple Acres has let a huge amount of its raw materials be consumed to produce a product that will never be sold. Not only have countless apples been wasted, but entire apple trees have been destroyed, resulting in the loss of ability to produce materials (known as capital, in economics). How much this will set the family back is uncertain, but Sweet Apple Acres has definitely taken a hit this episode.
  • They'd recoup their losses soon enough. Losing the rights to selling cider indefinitely would be much more devastating.
  • Granny Smith said it was worth it to get one over them, so she at least clearly didn't mind.
  • And besides, there was about one time where the Apple Farm were stripped of both their apples, and their leaves, and yet they still manage to grow.
• "Onto the next town", the Flim Flam brothers say. One: they've presumably done this before. Have they succeeded in driving other Apple families out of business? Two: they're doing it again. Will the next town's citizens be so lucky as Applejack's?
  • That's assuming that there were Apple families in the towns they've tried. In concurrence to the Fridge Brilliance above, if they'd driven an Apple Family out of town, their reputation would already be ruined, considering how tightly knit the family is.
    • That's assuming the other Apple's aren't as prideful as Applejack was in Applebucking. "I wasn't the best." seems to be a running theme for AJ and may very well be in the family.
    • It also relies on their being in frequent and regular contact with each other. Apart from the pilot episode of the first series, we rarely see any Apple family members beyond the main four, and they are stated by Applejack to be busy working on their own farms.
  • A reverse one for the brothers themselves akin to Mugging the Monster: the fact they tried to run the matriarch of the large, widespread, and tight knit Apple family out of her farm will not sit well with any other Apple in Equestria.
  • They've probably hit a bunch of other farms where the conditions weren't as dire, never stayed to exploit their cider monopoly (since they never bargained for long-term apple supplies), and may have even 'lost' previous challenges (but still gotten a huge amount of nearly free apple cider). Most of Equestria's farms couldn't have as many near-disasters or be so close to going bankrupt as Apple Acres.
  • Judging from the brothers' behaviours throughout the episode, they seem quietly confident in their run-the-ponies-out-of-business scheme, which suggests that any experience they've had has been successful. The only time they both lose their cool is when the mane six starts beating them at the contest, which they clearly didn't expect. Possibly the main thing that helps them keep out of trouble is their constant travelling.
  • The brothers also seem to be confident in their cider, regardless of the quality. They may have served or at least tried to serve tainted cider with twigs, rocks and all to other towns before hitting Ponyville!
• You don't have to be a libertarian to be bothered by the winner of the contest obtaining a government sponsored monopoly on cider in Ponyville.
  • No, you need to be an anarchist instead to be bothered by the government enforcing contracts. That or in favor of a nanny state that ensures that everybody gets to have a successful business, whether they want to or not.
    • So what happens if some third party wants to start selling cider in Ponyville?
    • You go there and make a FAIR contract with the Apples, with Twilight Sparkle and/or the town's notary as witnesses. In other places, however, there could be trouble. That's why we've done away with government-enforced monopolies and replaced them with professional licences...

Read It and Weep

• Rainbow Dash hides under the bed of a pony with a shaved head, implying that this pony is either recovering from brain surgery... or chemotherapy.
  • The ward Rainbow Dash was on looked more like a broken bone ward. It's more likely that he was doing a series of dares and ended up breaking something. And since his head isn't bandaged, the baldness could just be a fashion statement.
  • Could be a concussion bad enough that they had to shave his head for stitches or what have you.
  • Or maybe the baldness was just from the earlier parts of the escalating series of dares.
  • Given the quavery voice when the pony accuses Rainbow Dash of trying to steal his slippers, it's also possible he's just old.
• The mental patient pony that barks like a dog.
  • Somebody pointed out that this is exactly what happened to Big Macintosh in episode 2. Discord literally drove Big Mac insane.
  • She's got a screw cutie mark. Considering how pony's cutie marks are destined to what the pony's special talent is, this pony's cutie mark story must be extremely interesting.
  • Or she's a carpenter or something...
    • In season 3, she is seen in the background at the front door of a house, farewelling a nurse. She's made significant progress in treatment and is living at home again. This considered, insanity is not her destiny.
    • Unless she relapses.
• Rainbow's roommate heard her narrating the entire book — was he driven to desperation by a need to know how it ended? He couldn't exactly say so...
  • After days of listening to Rainbow endlessly bounce a ball off the walls, strobe the light switch on and off, and tell horrible jokes, he may well need to move to the mental ward himself. Worst Roommate Ever.
• Rainbow Dash lives in a house in the clouds. The doctors kick her out of the hospital in a wheelchair, all alone.. after telling her to not fly for a week and not arranging any sort of transportation.
  • There probably are some sort of regular "sky ferries", or magical teleporters, or something like that, which would allow earthbound ponies access Cloudsdale whenever they need to. Or, to take it to it's simplest, assumed it would be easy to find another pegasus to give her a lift.
  • Failing that, they saw non-unicorns visiting her whom they might assume could put her up for a little while.
• Why would Spike not be at the hospital, visiting Rainbow Dash? Based on the doctors in The Secret of My Excess, the Hospital could have seen Spike as a pet and not let him in.
  • Given that Equestria and Dragon Lands are in more positive political relations right now, dragons could see that sort of behavior as racism.

Hearts and Hooves Day

• The Cutie Mark Crusaders crash a funeral. Death and funerals in the ponyverse are now canon.
  • With the showing order of the episodes, some fans noticed an unintentional link between the funeral and the hospitalised, supposedly 'cancer pony' from the previous episode.
• When the love potion causes the prince and princess to become too distracted and neglect their responsibilities, chaos reigns.
  • It also mentions "something about a dragon". Discord's species is Draconequus, dragon horse.
  • ...It also could mean regular Dragons, which, after seeing Spike in Secret of My Excess, would definitely not be any better.
• The ingredients of the love potion involve only a cloud, a rainbow, and a pegasus feather. The terrifying thing is, those things are constantly next to each other. For instance, the Cloudsdale weather factory is perpetually one small accident away from accidentally creating a batch of the potion.
  • My thoughts upon reading this: "That's stupid. If clouds and rainbows accidentally get mixed, they're still not going to be accidentally stirred with a pegasus feather, fast, not slow. For that matter, 'give it to two ponies who are not in the know' implies that it only works if given to two ponies, whereas an accident might well only administer it to one, not to mention that it may imply that it only works if administered as a deliberate deception . . . wait, that's worse."
  • It's not a rainbow, it's the rainbow's glow, which (in the episode) had to be mechanically extracted from the greyscale part of the rainbow, and there's a potion base to which the three ingredients (well, two ingredients and stirrer) were added, so it's possible that it only works when the ingredients are added to a Blank Potion that serves as the base of many simple potions. It's quite possible that the potion could easily be made by someone messing around with potion testing, or by getting the recipe wrong for a very similar potion, but could otherwise pretty much only be made intentionally.
  • If anypony made a batch by accident, nobody would use the batch. If a worker makes a poison by accident, everypony else would have noticed the weird cloud batch.
• Cherilee seems pretty calm about the fact that her students slipped her, essentially, a date rape drug.
  • Not just any date rape drug, the perfect date rape drug. It's dirt cheap (you can find the ingredients by looking out your window), can be made in your living room in less than a minute, instantly brainwashes the victim into absolute mind slavery, lasts exactly as long as the rapist wants it to, leaves no marks, and the victim doesn't remember a single thing. Hell, one of the recipe's instructions is to deliberately give it to "ponies who aren't in the know"...
    • The only consolation is that if you want to take advantage of your victim, you're stuck taking the drug too, being trapped like they are. Though an unscrupulous voyeur could easily abuse this, or heck, just someone with co-conspirators.
• The existence of Love Potions and Love Poisons are Fridge Horrors in and of themselves, given the implications of both. Not made much better by just how easy it was to get the recipe.
• Cherilee thought nothing of knocking three of her favorite students out of the way in her pursuit to see Big Macintosh. What if it had somehow come down to fighting? She probably wouldn't be in the right state of mind not to hurt them... Or kill them, if she felt she had no choice.
• Mrs. Cake has a throw-away line about the fact that she "could use the catering business" from the wedding. Perhaps the fact that Sugarcube Corner has taken considerable damage in Season 2, and even in this episode, has left them teetering on the brink of financial ruin from the continuous repairs.
  • Not to mention the new babies.
• Some have noticed that if the CMCs wanted to nullify the effects of the poison, they could've just waited for both Big Mac and Cheerilee to fall asleep. However... what if it prevented them from falling asleep? There are nasty health-related implications behind this, much like with the Cutie Pox.
  • Considering the historical love poison wouldn't have been that big a disaster if simple sleep had cured it (a mere day of infatuation shouldn't cause a kingdom to slide into ruin), I'd say either time asleep doesn't count, the poison prevents sleep... or it becomes permanent after a certain time.
• What the hell was Twilight doing, giving the CMC a book like that? Wasn't their unusual interest in making a love potion kind of suspicious? They're kids, why on earth would they need that?
  • Perhaps she went "The rambunctious little kids suddenly want to learn about history? My life's work is validated!" where anypony else would've gone "The rambunctious little kids suddenly want to learn about history? Seems suspicious..."
  • Twilight's lack of suspicion about this might be later explained by her connection to Cadance, who can spread love (in a non-rapey kind of way) wherever she goes. It appears Twilight was somewhat sheltered in Canterlot, both by her self-imposed isolation from others and by a somewhat privileged upbringing with her family and then as Celestia's one-on-one student. It may not have even occurred to her what they were asking for.

A Friend In Deed

• Cranky only meets Matilda again after moving to Ponyville. If he had moved anywhere else, he may have ended up dying without ever seeing her again.
  • What would have happened if Matilda didn't live in Ponyville? Wouldn't that mean Pinkie would have destroyed Cranky's beloved memories for nothing?
  • He's also been searching his ENTIRE LIFE for her, when she's been in Ponyville the whole time. He's wasted his ENTIRE LIFE.
  • Though he eventually found the love of his life, poor old Cranky has wasted the bulk of his life searching for her. He tells Pinkie Pie he's made plenty of friends all over Equestria but he was still lonely and constantly moving.
  • In a sense, though, it was almost preferable for Matilda and Cranky to reunite in old age. Matilda is a mule, not a donkey, so if they had stayed together when they were younger and tried to have children...let's just say it would've led to a situation rather like that infamous Tear Jerker scene in Up.
• Jacks are small, pointy, and easy-to-swallow objects. There's a set of them in the Cake babies' room, and we know one of them likes chewing on things...
• What's Derpy doing in the snowglobe?
  • Egging on the fans.
• The reason Pinkie Pie ruined Cranky's wig was because she thought it was a spider. As funny as the situation was, remember that from her point of view, it was a living creature she was stomping repeatedly and not a wig. Kind of unsettling to think that the cheerful Pinkie Pie of all ponies would be okay with killing little critters...
  • From her perspective, it's a "little" critter that's big as a wig, perched on his head. If it had been a spider, it could well be quite dangerous, but not so big as to not be dispatched with a good stomping.

Putting Your Hoof Down

• New Fluttershy has no qualms about resorting to violence for minor slights. "Old Fluttershy" kicked a bear's ass and almost snapped his neck. And until she had her My God, What Have I Done? moment, she seemed to be steadily getting worse. What if she had not HAD that moment?
  • This and perhaps this with an evil cult, a chainsaw and shed?
  • Worst thing? She wasn't even under Discord's influence this time. All she needed was some well-intentioned but overapplied advice to push her in the wrong direction. Just what sort of darkness lurks in the heart of this timid pony?
• It's kinda easy to understand why some ponies keep calling Iron Will a monster: Who else is depicted as a bipedal figure with horns and hoofed feet who is associated with goats? Oh right, Satan.
• Iron Will himself is Fridge Horror. Two wit: he's a Minotaur...who held his seminar in a hedge maze...What happened the last time someone was trapped in a maze with a minotaur again?
  • Yea, Theseus was able to kill the minotaur why? Oh wait that's still fridge horror, all they need is a warrior pony with a spool of thread.
  • Then why ponies weren't scared of him when they attended his seminar? Minotaurs are most likely treated as any other sapient race that has appeared in show, so somepony killing him could be considered as a murderer. Plus, who's to say minotaurs in this show aren't herbivores?
• It might seem like a lot of the ponies in "Putting Your Hoof Down" have taken levels in jerkass, but how many times have we really seen Fluttershy in Ponyville by herself? It's almost always with her friends, or at least while guiding some animals around town. They might act civil because her friends will stand up for her, or because a pack of wild animals is more trouble than it's worth, but what if that's how they act when she's alone all the time because they know Fluttershy won't do anything about it?
• Another reason is because Fluttershy was the one telling them off. Seeing their formerly sweet and gentle friend expel so much bile must have been very hard for them. The most horrifying thing about the argument is that Fluttershy actually thought about how meaningless her friends passions are, and she wasn't being manipulated into it.
• In 'Putting Your Hoof Down', Fluttershy uses the feathers of her wings as if they were fingers to open her saddlebag. While this is creepy, Fridge Brilliance steps in with an X-ray from 'Read it and Weep' of Dash's broken wing, which shows that wings have bones where there would normally be just delicate feathers. Knowing that Pegasi have bones in some of their feathers, the Fridge Horror comes when you consider 'Hearts and Hooves Day', where one of Scootaloo's feathers are yanked out without warning to make a potion. What if Sweetie Belle pulled the wrong feather?
  • Scootaloo probably would've farted. "Hey, kid, pull my finger."
  • Pulling bones out by hand isn't exactly an easy, painless, or particularly fast process; I doubt Scootaloo would've been both oblivious and powerless. But still, the possibility remains... *shudder*
• How much do Elements of Harmony bearers qualify for their Elements if "New Fluttershy" is technically still the bearer of the Element of Kindness? Is "Old Fluttershy" really that kind or is she actually a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing and the Elements can't distinguish this because they're simply magical inanimate objects?
  • If a crisis came up and they needed to use the Elements, "New Fluttershy"'s Element might not have worked for her (which is a problem in and of itself). The Elements seem to work based on whether or not the Bearer is worthy at the time of use, otherwise, they could have used them while they were Discorded, or Luna would not have lost hers when she became Nightmare Moon. This seems to allow for an Element Bearer to stumble and make mistakes, while at the same time allowing enough leeway to get them back on track, or be replaced if necessary.
• The existence of minotaurs in Equestria. If you know how minotaurs reproduced in Greek mythology, this makes the fanon theory that Equestria was built on the ruins of human civilization seem that much more plausible. Yes, human mythology doesn't take place here but when has that ever stopped fan theories?
  • That, mention of Romeo, Casanova, Fu Manchu, Hawaii(an shirts), Switzerland (Swiss cheese), and France (French haute couture), and possibly other things make it more and more likely. Hey, if they even know about a play character made up by Shakespeare, perhaps it isn't too far-fetched to think that that's how they know about tanks, bullets, guns, and some of our expressions, like "gift horse".
• Iron Will achieved accidentally what Discord failed to do: convince Fluttershy to be mean of her own free will. Fridge Brilliance: Fluttershy told Discord that she realizes her faults and is happy her friends want her to overcome them. It's only after Pinkie and Rarity fail to help her assert herself that she takes more drastic steps.
• Fluttershy's "The Reason You Suck" Speech to Pinkie becomes a lot more painful to watch when you remember how hard she takes the idea her friends don't care about her.
• Just how long was Fluttershy locked away in self-imposed exile? It would be bad enough if she had been there for weeks, but what if it was only hours? Considering hatred can cause an eternal winter via evil ghost horses, could profound sadness cause foliage to die in Equestria?
• In wake of Fluttershy's "Flying Feather" line, the Unusual Euphemism "Pony Feathers" and "Feather Brain" in earlier episodes take on whole new meanings...
  • More like hilarious in hindsight. Admit it, Rainbow Dash groaning "That fuckbrain!" or Applejack grumbling "Ah, pony-fuckers" (or "just "Ah, fuck" in general) is a pretty priceless and funny thought, especially because it certainly fits their characters.
• For Zebras, anything human-shaped is a Primal Fear. How fraught have relations between them and the bipedal Minotaurs been?

It's About Time

• How about the fact that there a gateway to Tartarus near Ponyville. Tartarus aka HELL in Greek/Roman myths. What the fuck is in there that Celestia didn't send Discord in?
  • Maybe Celestia thought that Discord would somehow use his powers of chaos and break out of Tartarus, with the other demonic creatures helping him out of his state? If Celestia sent Discord there, the legion might of banded together and freed him, allowing for the potential release of not only Discord if they broke past Ceberus's dimensional border, but all the legions of pony hell itself! And if Tartarus is pony hell, then that could include any manner of terrible ponies from the past!
  • Also, think about this: what allowed Discord to become free anyway? A disharmonious act being performed right in front of his statue (I am of the personal opinion that it wasn't the ONLY act that caused it, and that others had done so in the past so that the spell gradually became weaker, but I digress). So why would Celestia want to send statue Discord to Tartaurus with a bunch of evil creatures that would likely allow him to break free very, very quickly?
    • That's a common fanon explanation, but canonically Discord broke free because of the Elements of Harmony switching hands.
  • In season 4's finale, we see one of the evils trapped there. Namely Tirek. Considering he was so powerful sending Discord to stop him was considering the appropriate course of action, it seems probably Tartarus does have evils worse than Discord.
• Pinkie Pie keeps balls and eyepatches around Ponyville in case of emergency so that she could produce a ball and eyepatch for Twilight. Now what if Twilight had asked for a bone or meat instead of a ball for Cerberus...
  • Then Pinkamena would be considered a lot closer to canon.
  • The ball is inside a tree, but the eyepatch was hidden inside Twilight's house. Apparently Pinkie has been sneaking into friends' homes to hide things. This also makes Pinkie look like a hoarder.
• Twilight states that she hasn't slept for about 3 days. She probably hasn't eaten either.

Dragon Quest

• Twilight mentions that even she doesn't know where Spike's egg came from. Which raises the question, where did his egg come from, and how did Celestia obtain it?
  • This question is never answered. Which does raise the question, What happened to his parents?!
• Teenage dragons steal phoenix eggs, and smash them. Imagine being the parents of those dead eggs.
  • If Spike had smashed the egg, it wouldn't have been just an egg, but also a baby phoenix which was due to hatch at any moment. If he smashed it to the ground really, really hard...
• Phoenixes cannot die from old age but still lay eggs. Unless there are species that can prey on them, a population explosion is the only result.
  • Namely, dragons? Surely everypony noticed that.
• Spike is now a kidnapper, and Twilight, Rainbow and Rarity are his accomplices.
  • Spike rescued an egg that was abandoned by it's parents. We saw them fly away, and given that Peewee's egg hadn't hatched at the same time as the others, there's a non-zero chance that they thought that Peewee wasn't going to hatch at all.
• Who knows what the teen dragons would've done if they captured the phoenix chicks?
• What do we know about dragons now? Well, let's see: While dragons can be reasoned with and have a variety of emotions, it takes some doing to get through to them, they are quick-tempered and more than ready to become bloodthirsty killing machines, they are very prone to greed, which itself is almost a natural part of the growing process, and, after this episode, we know that they either don't give a flying feather about other dragons being jerks (if it's not to them), or they're complete jerks themselves. And let's not forget lazy, dimwitted, cruel, uncultured, disrespectful, and selfish. Sure, Spike's fine with living like a pony, but now that he knows all this, imagine the different thoughts he's gotta have running through his head...^note Are all dragons seriously like them? Am I really a member of such a horrible species? Am I going to end up mean someday? Am I supposed to be a jerk so I can grow up? Will I be little forever because I'm nice? What'll everyone think of me when ponykind eventually finds out enough about dragons? Will they shun me? Will they try to kick me out of Ponyville? Do I have any reason to be proud I'm a dragon?! Should I just...I dunno...ask Celestia or someone to transform me into a pony or something?...Wait, that could send some mixed messages...
  • The later episodes show that dragons have some sort of culture, and being rude, ferocious and greedy seems to be the norm to them.
• The teenaged dragons are very lucky Spike decided to have the group run for it and, Celestia forbid, they didn't actually hurt Spike. Imagine what Twilight could've done to them if she really tried, or Rainbow Dash for that matter.
  • And even if all four of them were no match for those dragons, I think a certain "namby pamby princess pony" would not take kindly to a group of riff-raff harming her closest student and her companions.
• If the teenaged dragons were willing to smash unhatched eggs and, presumably, kill the chicks For the Evulz, what would they have done to Spike if the girls hadn't shown up?!
• The teen dragons would have regretted calling Spike puny and peewee if he had gone on a collection spree.
  • We have no idea what would have happened if it went into an all out fight while Spike was in hording heat, but if it is a natural occurrence, the Dragons would have probably had a method to lay down the law without taking the entire mountain with them. I hope.
  • There are three issues that make it unlikely that Spike could have pulled off a greed growth spurt. The first is that it required a specific state of mind to activate, with he is unlikely to be able to achieve on command. The second issue is that he needed to take a lot of stuff to reach adulthood, more than was lying around the gathering area. The third is that while the ponies were unable or unwilling to stop Spike, the same can't be said for the teen dragons. Actually, the dragons (adolescent and adult) would probably consider the attempt normal playing, like the king of the horde game, so they might not even notice what he was trying to do.
    • Plus, they're also dragons, who have been raised in a dragon environment. They probably know how to counter such things, since that's a normal part of draconic upbringing.
• So ... now living in the library, we have Twilight, Owlowiscious, Spike, and Peewee. Pony wizard who can light fires (she lit up candles in one episode), owl, fire-breathing dragon, and fire-being phoenix. That library is SO toast.
  • It was, but not really in the way predicted here.
• Nothing is known about dragons due to fear? Well, Ponyville has easy access to a friendly, trusting, and relatively harmless neighborhood dragon. Odds are, there's a pony with a low moral compass who wishes to pioneer dragon studies...
• The first two times we saw big, adult dragons, they were presented as a loners who prefer to spend their life guarding and collecting trasures, and even one of them is able to easily ravage a pony town. And now we see them migrating. This means that something had forced dragons to abandon their hoards and overcome their extreme jerkassness to seek for strength of numbers and travel somewhere far away like that. And according to Twilight this happens once in a generation presumably of ponies and not dragons because, also according to her, nothing is known about the latter.

Hurricane Fluttershy

• Equestria lacks a water cycle. Water does not evaporate on its own.... Even with the other things ponies apparently control, that is disturbing.
  • It might just be currently settled Equestria, given that Everfree is so "spooky" because it works on its own like a forest here on Earth, and that we know that Celestia and Luna had at one time called it their home. It's quite likely that the clouds that need managing (for example, the ones RD takes care of in ten second flat in the first episode) come from Everfree and other, similarly wild areas.
  • Pre-pony Equestria definitely had a functional water cycle, as do places without pegasi. Unless the presence of pegasi outright eliminates it, which seems unlikely, Equestria should have one, it's just that they don't rely on it.
  • No evaporation would make hanging wet clothes on a clothesline a waste of time, wouldn't it?
• Spitfire was present for both tornado attempts when they were failing to reach the proper wingpower. She did nothing. If Fluttershy hadn't managed to pull through, there would have been no rainfall all year, anywhere in Equestria. What the hell, Spitfire?
  • Seeing as how they could just bring in a few dozen pegasi from Cloudsdale to make up the gap and try again, it's not really that big a deal. The only thing on the line is town pride.
• Roid Rage/Snowflake (now known as Bulk Biceps), and his assumed consume of steroids or some analogue; considering his wings have shrunk due to the usage of this substance, it's possible that the only thing that gives them enough power to even move a stallion as huge as himself comes precisely from this assumed drug. So, if Bulk Biceps ever has to stop taking the substance due to health issues, he'd be unable to fly because his wings, already underdeveloped, wouldn't have any more extra power to even move him, even if he gets to lose some muscle mass from quitting this habit. Of course, all this is assumed, but it's quite sad and tragic if we compare him to Real Life athletes that abuse of illegal substances to gain muscle mass.
  • Probably not the case, since during the first part of the tornado, he was seen to be to fly normally even with his tiny wings.

Ponyville Confidential

• Sure, Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, and Scootaloo were responsible for humiliating everyone in Ponyville. But what exactly did Ponyville do in retaliation? They basically exiled them - a young group of fillies, mind you - from their society, even if it was for a short while. Even their relatives turn their backs on them! Well, with the exception of Rarity, possibly...
  • Exclusion from society, turning their backs on the young fillies-we're talking about little children here, who were not to blame for their actions. Keep in mind that the CMC are probably about the age of preteens, if at that. Now, compared with Diamond Tiara's coercion, Ponyville's exclusion and them even being isolated from their own families, what sort of thing are young people in real life driven to do as a result of bullying and social isolation? They were even talking about sleeping in the clubhouse....how long would it have been before the idea of suicide came into the CMC's minds?
• Regarding the mystery as to how the entire town of Ponyville figured out who Gabby Gums was, one can argue that it might have been Rarity who exposed the identities to her friends, who may have told the town later. But remember when Twilight brought up the fact that Sweetie Belle was on the newspaper staff and that she might know something about Gabby Gums? Well, let that sink in and realize that it's rather likely that Rarity kept her mouth shut about Sweetie Belle getting involved when she found out, considering how genuinely worried she was for her sister at that point. The other Mane 5, while they were all listening, took this into consideration and once they recognized Sweetie Belle with Apple Bloom and Scootaloo, they, along with the rest of their friends and family members, all made up their minds about the CMC being Gabby Gums. Furthermore, considering that Spike was also following the stories, it's quite likely that Twilight reminded him about Sweetie Belle as well, allowing him to eventually come to the conclusion about the CMC when they came to their place after Twilight put up the force field. Lastly, Fluttershy may have told Angel about Sweetie Belle ahead of time and what she looked like, which is no more apparent than how Angel instantly recognized the CMC when they came to Fluttershy's door. Take all of THAT in, and you'll slowly realize that Sweetie Belle is the main clue to the Gabby Gums' idenities.

  • Remember when "Gabby Gums" interviewed Spike? Unless they somehow managed to hide their identity during that interview, he would have known it was them from the start. As it wouldn't have occurred to them to go so far as to do that, and Sweetie Belle is still the main clue to the Gabby Gums' identities as stated above, it seems far more likely that Spike was the one who exposed the secret to the town.

• Rarity asks Sweetie Belle if she really wants hurting other ponies' feelings as her destiny, and Sweetie, Scootaloo, and Apple Bloom don't want that. Diamond Tiara not only declared that she doesn't care about feelings, but she doesn't seem to mind having other ponies' feelings hurt as her destiny. That is one cold, screwed-up filly!
  • Diamond Tiara already has her cutie mark, her destiny's already set, so she probably takes that as meaning she can do whatever she wants because she's rich and in charge.
  • Diamond Tiara's mindset in this episode gets even more disturbing if you look back from late season 5. It's not just that she doesn't care, it's that she's essentially forbidden from caring.
• Gabby Gums' article about Twilight is headlined "I Was A Canterlot Snob". While everyone goes on about how much the CMC hurt and humiliated the citizens of Ponyville (and for good reason), it seems constantly overlooked on what they did to Twilight, who had been just as good to them, but got a FAR more scathing article. Previous episodes, such as "Boast Busters" and "Winter Wrap-Up" show Twilight to be easily hurt, as well as eager for approval and acceptance. What's more, as impressive as Twilight's force field was, it raises the question of why she blocked off the ENTIRE library if she only wanted to keep the Crusaders out? This would imply that she had to deal with ponies who had actually believed that she was really like what that article said. How badly damaged was Twilight's reputation?
  • Also, remember how Ponyville reacted to Trixie in "Boast Busters" and how scared Twilight was that everybody would hate her for "showing off"? If they thought she was being snobbish...
    • Try putting yourself Twilight's horseshoes: Bending over backwards to earn the respect of her Ponyville peers, only to have it shredded in an instant by a slanderous article.
  • Plus, Twilight was the only one who was against the Gabby Gums article from the get-go, so unlike the rest of the ponies who were being hypocrites, Twilight had a legitimate reason to be upset.
  • And that's not even mentioning how it nearly damaged Twilight and Spike's relationship, as he was stated to be their source. No wonder he's so angry at the CMC.
  • Not only did they hurt and humiliate Twilight, but also they did the same to Spike. Imagine his position—three friends come over and ask you to give them an interview on what your Cool Big Sis is really like. Initially, you're pleased to have the opportunity to tell everyone how special she really is. Then the newspaper comes out. You pick it up and — "What?! This isn't what I said!" According to "The Crystal Empire", Twilight may be the most important pony in his life, and they turned his words against her.
    • And going along with the idea above of Spike being the one who exposed Gabby Gums' identities, when the CMC interviewed him, chances are that he talked about Twilight's previous life in Canterlot as an antisocial bookworm and how she originally said that "all the ponies in this town are CRAZY!", which was how they got the idea to write about her being a snob.
• As noted on the Tearjerker page, you have to wonder what kind of a panic the CMC's families were when they decided to stay in their treehouse until they could fix things—after all, they never tell anyone else about this plan. Applejack and Big Mac probably knew where they were (the treehouse is on their property), but Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle's parents don't! It gets worse. After Sweetie Belle didn't come home, her parents would probably contact Rarity next to see if she's with her. The last time Rarity saw Sweetie Belle, they were fighting, and if Rarity did cause the entire town finding out, as some might think, you can't help but wonder how she must've been feeling...
  • Of course, if they know the CMC spend a lot of time at the clubhouse, then the parents would probably assume they were there, and could always head over to the farm to check.
    • I don't think Scootaloos parents would care, I'm pretty sure they've been confirmed to have demanding jobs, and that Scoots is very good at evading her foalsitter, so at the very least they would've never known.
• The CMC are shown making up with everyone...except for Big Macintosh, who was exceptionally furious with the girls to the point of breaking his usual demeanour. Does this mean he never forgave the CMC? Maybe he actually needed more time to cool off and properly forgive the girls (though any suggestion he still has a grudge against Applebloom is abolished by "Brotherhooves Social").
• ...Was Rainbow Dash intending to give the Crusaders something like Pneumonia?

MMMystery on the Friendship Express

A Canterlot Wedding, Parts 1 & 2

• So did Lyra, Twinkleshine and Colgate get out of the caves?
  • Yep, only to get shoved out of the way by Rarity during the bouquet toss. Not a good day for those three.
    • That being said, Twilight facing the brainwashed three becomes way creepier when you realize that they may have been the closest thing to friends Twilight had when she was living in Canterlot: in Mare in the Moon, Minuette and Twinkleshine invite her to a party, and Lyra is seen attempting to be friendly as Twilight charges past.
  • Assuming they were real Lyra, Twinkleshine and Minuette. Notice how Chrysalis refers to them as her brides. This could mean that Cadance wasn't the only pony that Changelings had kidnapped and replaced.
• Pay close attention to how Celestia delivers the line "You have a lot to think about." It is not unlike the way she delivered the line "You won't get away with this, Discord!" back in the first part of The Return of Harmony. Now, before she delivered that line, it was already preestablished that she felt nothing but pure hatred for Discord. I'll let that sink in for a minute.
  • Twilight picked up on this. Note she was tearing up when Celestia said that line, and isn't her biggest insecurity an inability to handle the Princess being disappointed in her?
  • It gets worse: did anypony else notice that Celestia, after being proven conclusively wrong and almost dooming all of Equestria because she didn't listen to Twilight, never apologized? She gave Twilight some vaguely approving line about learning to "trust her instincts", but to quote Applejack, Twilight didn't learn anything! She knew to trust her instincts; it was Celestia who, despite the fact that Twilight has been right each and every time she's predicted some supernatural disaster, didn't give her desperate warning a second thought, and in fact dismissed her as coldly as she once did Discord.
    • That was Celestia apologizing to Twilight. She's immortal. The longer she lives, the harder it becomes to move past the mistakes she's made. Apologizing for them only keeps them fresh on her mind and slows the healing process. Here, we see her using a technique for getting around that problem; Celestia "apologizes" by showering Twilight with praise for going right where Celestia went wrong.
    • She may also have motivation for the above from having no idea what all the Changeling queen did to her before putting her in that chrysalis. With a room full of Celestia's subjects watching. Another problem with immortality: there's never enough brain bleach.
    • Never mind Celestia; how about the fact that, aside from Applejack, none of Twilight's friends apologised for not believing her? Unless Applejack was apologizing to Twilight on the others' behalf....
    • Just to add, when Fake Cadance said that no one will ever look for her in the Canterlot Caves. It could just mean that no one will know that there are caves underneath but does anyone think that they'll never even start to worry about her?
• Just what, one wonders, would the real Cadance's fate have been if Twilight hadn't conveniently ended up in the same caves? Would the Changelings even have cared to retrieve her once she'd outlived her usefulness? (Granted, as nasty as they are the Changelings don't seem to be big on killing as such — they need the love of living beings to feed on, after all.)
  • On that note, just how long have they been keeping Cadance in those caves? You'd think it had to be, at bare minimum, a week or other fairly lengthy amount of time in order for Queen Chrysalis to pull off this scheme.
  • And what if Chrysalis hadn't sent Twilight to the very same caves so she could find her? Cadance could have easily died down there with nopony any wiser...
  • And there was no sign of any sort of food or water. By the time Twilight came she was probably already on the brink of starvation.
  • The good news is, Cadance's ability to bring out or create love would make her the one pony that couldn't outlive her usefulness, so the Queen would have been making sure she was still alive, if weak. The bad news is, she would have been forced to Mind Rape ponies for the rest of her life. Being forced to cast spells like the Want-It-Need-it spell or the love poison on hapless ponies would quickly become a Fate Worse than Death.
• So, Queen Chrysalis had Shining Armor under her control for quite some time, while she was disguised as his fiancee: who's to say she didn't take advantage of that to force him to have sex with her; as a matter of fact, depending on how long the whole imposition has been going on, did Shining Armor do.. that.. pre-engagement.. stuff with Chrysalis?
  • Maybe he saved himself for marriage.
    • Knowing Lauren Faust, this is most likely: she states that ponies don't even create alcoholic beverages, much less get drunk on them, so premarital... intimacy is almost certainly out of the question.
    • Faust said that "Nopony approves of boozing it up," which actually kind of implies that alcoholic beverages exist for them to be disapproved of in the first place; at any rate, Shining Armor and Cadance had already moved in together, and even if they were abstaining, the Queen was laying the mind whammy on him, so what he wanted may not have been relevant.
  • Remember his complaints about maintaining the shield 24/7? Exhaustion and terrible headaches kill the mood.
    • Besides, unless they're rather conservative (which is doubtful, given how Cadance is a Love Goddess, Shining Armor and Cadance have probably consummated their relationship by the time of this episode... with Chrysalis disguised as Princess Cadance and her desire for love to feed on, she probably slept with Shining Armor then as well, meaning Chrysalis technically raped Shining Armor. Let's hope Equestrian culture doesn't have double standards about this, especially considering why it happened.
• Did the Love Spell kill any of the changelings at the end, or are they now simply all over Equestria?
  • More importantly, Chrysalis wasn't imprisoned or otherwise permanently defeated, she's still out there somewhere!
    • Potentially still with her changeling army (they can fly, so simply getting spontaneously kicked out of Canterlot isn't likely to kill them), who can still impersonate anypony at a moment's notice and who are likely still hungry...
    • There is a chance that they were unable to use their wings, see how some of them are shown falling directly towards the ground and out of sight, and from the way Rainbow Dash, the same pony who easily recovered from the dizzy dial in Wonderbolts Academy, is unable to recover from Applejack sending her crashing into Twilight's balcony in Applebuck Season, not to mention the state Celestia was in after she got blasted with a magic spell that seems weaker than the one Chrysalis got, Chrysalis's only two ways to have not suffered a Disney Villain Death is to be faster than Rainbow Dash, or have Joker Immunity like Team Rocket.
• Changelings feed on love, and Shining Armor's love for Cadance already put Chrysalis past Celestia-tier. What if Cadance and Shining Armor's combined Power of Love had supercharged Chrysalis? Seems like a hell of a gamble on Cadance and Shining Armor's part.
  • For that matter, if just the love between two ponies was enough to make Chrysalis more powerful than Celestia, how powerful would she and her armies have gotten by feeding on the love of every pony in Equestria?
  • That's assuming she can absorb an infinite amount. It's entirely possible she got blasted into the distance for the simple fact that she blasted was too much at once for her to absorb.
  • "Humans need water, they can still drown in it!"
• Suppose Chrysalis did survive her fall. If she found out about the Crystal Heart in the Crystal Empire, she could easily enter while in disguise and absorb its power. Which could be enough to make her invincible, considering that it was powerful enough to do what Celestia and Luna couldn't with their combined magic.
  • Speaking of which Chrysalis and her Changelings were last seen being blasted into the horizon at what was likely super sonic speeds. If Rainbow Dash crashing into the ground during a normal stunt training session put her in the hospital, it's a very likely possibility at least some of them were heavily wounded, if not killed on impact. That's assuming the impact alone didn't do the job. Not to say Chrysalis doesn't deserve it.
    • Unlikely. The Changelings were shown smashing into the ground at high speed during the attack, and they were fine. They're also insectoid, and thus, presumably harder to kill. Plus, they can fly, and they were hurled quite a horizontal distance; plenty of time for them to recover and get their wings going. And that's just the Mooks; Chrysalis is presumably much more powerful than the normal Changelings even by default, and still probably had a good bit of 'charge' left from Shining Armor. Never mind what she may have absorbed while Shining Armor and Cadance supercharged their Power of Love...
    • And yet getting tripped by Fluttershy cowering in fear was enough to knock them out. When they fly into the ground, they form a magical cone around them beginning with their horns that probably protects them. The former point also brings up more Fridge Horror, if that was enough to knock one out, then what are the odds any of them were conscious enough to recover with their wings after being hit with enough force to launch them over the horizon?
    • On the subject of changelings defeated by the Mane 6, while some are shown twitching with their eyes closed, others are shown completely motionless with their eyes open.
• Celestia was held captive in a chrysalis; i.e. the cocoon in which an animal goes to metamorphize into something else. And didn't Chrysalis look a lot like a standard Princess pony, albeit corrupted...?
  • Except that Chrysalis said that she dreamt of doing this since she was little. Of course her father might have been a pony.
    • [[spoilers: Or both of her parents could have been Changelings, given the presence of Ocellus parents.]]
  • And what would the chrysalis imprisonment have done to Celestia? Would it have turned her into a demon pony, or do changelings eat the ponies they do that to?
    • It might have just been like the cocoons spiders use to hold their prey before eating them. Okay, that's not much better.
• In all likelihood, Chrysalis intended Twilight to kill the real Princess Cadance. I mean, she goaded her into blowing up the very wall Cadance was trapped behind. Sure, she said Twilight would only have to "catch" her, but given how rage-filled Twilight was at that point...
  • More to the point, Twilight is now confirmed as being capable of shooting magic bolts from her horn that can put hoof-sized pockmarks in rock and blow up boulders the size of a pair of sofas stacked atop one another when fully charged up, much resembling the effect of a 120mm gun like the kind you'd find on a modern main battle tank. Now, when she finally goes off the deep end, there really isn't anywhere you can hide.
  • Adding to this, Queen Chrysalis did it knowing that Twilight might uncover the real Cadance, hoping that Twilight would kill the real Cadance with her magic; given the furious state at the time, if Cadance hadn't remembered the Secret Handshake to prove she was the real one, then things would have gotten worse.
    • The beginning of part 2 was a downright scary Hope Spot from Cadance's POV: consider it for a moment; stuck in a cell, hungry, thirsty^note even assuming Chrysalis wanted her alive comfortable and happy would not be worth the bother, no idea what the impostor is doing to your betrothed... then the cell wall is shattered by a bolt of familiar power. Twilight's here! You're saved! Aunt Cellie was right about how her powers were growing! Twilight looks... equicidal. That witch is still wearing your face! Aunt Cellie was right about how her powers were growing! OhbuckohbuckOHBUCK!
• A Chrysalis is used to incubate an entity to bring it into the world in its mature form. What if Chrysalis herself was incubating another entity, and if so, what was it?
• Cadance is an alicorn, like Celestia and Luna, who have both lived for at least a millenia and probably more. All canon so far shows that the lifetime of normal ponies is limited much like humans - suggesting that Cadance has just entered into a marriage which will last a few decades, while she'll live for centuries.
  • We might have a different reason for Celestia and Luna's immortality: age spells, which only the most skilled and powerful magic users can cast. Celestia and Luna are supposed to be extremely powerful and have centuries of experience. Of course, this may mean they've been holding out on the fountain of youth from the populace (though it may just be that age spells are only permanently work if they're self-cast).
    • Only Celestia and Luna seem to be immortal; they have flowing manes and tails while Cadance doesn't.
  • An average horse's lifespan is about thirty years, and even if by being a unicorn his lifespan is extended, alicorns from what we see from Celestia and Luna, live for thousands of years.
    • As mentioned above, there's actually a strong suggestion in-series that the Earth Pony known as Granny Smith is over 3-4 centuries old. So it's possible that the difference between Shining Armor and Cadance's lifespans isn't that great — not to mention, Celestia and Luna's long lifespans may come from whatever it was that endowed them the power/authority to control the sun and the moon rather than their race.
• What if the Mane Six had managed to get the Elements of Harmony? Considering the fact that changelings feed on love, would the elements have made them more powerful?
  • Or how about even if they've managed to get the Elements of Harmony but failing since they've practically abandoned her. There are several ways the elements could fail, such as betraying your loyalty towards a friend, falling for dishonesty, etc. As well, Twilight may not be a mare who holds a grudge but what if she was just bottling it up?
    • Speaking of which, it's a little alarming to see how the ponies managed to betray their very elements: Applejack bought what was pretty much a big lie (Dishonesty); Rainbow Dash ditched Twilight for a pony she even claimed to have never met (Treachery); Rarity, instead of comforting her friend, tries to get into good graces with royalty (Greed/Selfishness); and Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie left Twilight to wallow in misery, even though they both know that Shining Armor would be comforting Cadance (Cruelty and Apathy). By that point, one should wonder if the Elements would even work after what had happened, as the ponies didn't even have time to make up or forgive one another; Twilight may not hold grudges but the other Mane Five going against their elements would be enough altogether.
    • Shining Armor and Cadance's attack was powered by love yet it didn't power the changelings up...
• Chrysalis admires how Equestria has more love than she's ever encountered. Just how many countries/worlds has she already..."encountered" and what became of them?
• Imagine the sort of tyrant Cadance could be if she used her powers for evil. She has the power to make every pony in Equestria completely devoted to her. ^note ''More like she has the power to bolster the love one already feels toward another."
  • But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. They had won the victory over themselves. They loved Queen Chrysalis.
  • This creates even more implications if the audience has prior knowledge of The Sword Of Truth series of books, which have the Confessor. A being who's ability is to suppress a person's ability to feel anything but love for the Confessor and magnifies it tenfold. If a confessor asks a person she has "touched" to die, they are so devoted their heart simply stops. If Cadance became a Tyrant, and Love is implied to be stronger than Celestia (Chrysalis beats Celestia —> Chrysalis is beaten by Love) she could either enslave or kill both Princesses on a whim.
  • There is a way that Cadance basically could use her powers for evil, even if her main power is to strengthen love already there - remember the "Want It Need It spell"? It's likely that Twilight learned that from Cadance, and it forced everypony to fall in love with her Smarty Pants doll. A "Want It Need It" spell there, a bit of her love-strengthening magic there, and Cadance could have every stallion in Equestria under her control to be a slave to her love if she really wanted.
  • Even if they "strengthen what's already there", that's not exactly much better. For instance, it is never really made clear just what qualifies as "love" for her powers? It's almost guaranteed that you feel more "love" towards any random passerby - even one who you absolutely hate - than you do towards that ant that is crawling along your wall. Can she use that? If so, then even if her powers don't "create" love, then the effects would be effectively indistinguishable.
    • Depends a lot on one's personal stance on "love" in general. Is love a good thing? Then Cadance's powers are pretty unquestionably positive. Is it an already-questionable breakdown of rationality (or worse) in its own right? Then they suddenly look a lot more ominous. (Of course, the real reason her powers are going to be limited is somewhat more meta: most of the show is driven by interpersonal conflict of some kind or other, and if a Princess Deus ex Machina could just pop in and resolve everything with a few strategically-placed pink hearts anytime she liked, that would be kind of anticlimactic. So she probably can't actually do that. Watch out if she ever picks up a Superpowered Evil Side, though...)
    • Not to mention the Unfortunate Implications of the "Want It, Need It" spell... take that in account with Cadance's power to amplify love, add a Superpowered Evil Side into the mix, and, well, you could have the potential for a very sinister alicorn.
  • Not quite too worrisome, but if her Love magic does not distinguish between The Four Loves, and she misjudges a "couple" that needs the help of her magic, that might result in some unfortunate accidents, as Fan Art was quick to elaborate upon.
    • Actually, even if it doesn't identify The Four Loves as four distinct, separate things, they are. Strengthening what's already there would not change the type of love. Replacing it, however...
• This little piece of Fridge Horror also contains some Accidental Innuendo. The Changelings are based on insects on design, and have a queen, so it's probably safe to assume they act a lot like bees. Of course Chrysalis is female, but the same can probably be said for the rest of her subjects, considering on how they acted they're the workers. But that leaves the question on reproduction, which leaves us to the drone, the sole male member of the colony. For those who don't know what his purpose is it's to fertilize a receptive queen. Now consider Shining Armor who Chrysalis had him under her control the entire time...let that sink in for a moment.
• At the wedding, Pinkie Pie was at least at one time planning to play music known to attract parasprites.
  • It's likely that you have to be in proximity to paraspites to attract them with music. I doubt very much whether they can hear it all the way from the Everfree forest. And even if worst case scenario, the parasprites were attracted, they'd come very slowly (i.e. walking in a straight line) and they could easily be lured out, since the music would still be keeping them docile.
• In the wedding photo montage, Rarity is seen to be hanging out with Fancy Pants and making flirtatious looks at him. Perfectly fine, but one realizes that next season will likely have an episode about letting someone with a puppy dog crush (Spike) down gently as she never really said that she feels the same way about him and just likes him as a friend.
  • Which would be an uncomfortable situation for both parties, but you'd have to be incredibly sensitive for it to qualify as actual HORROR. Most viewers will have at least one similar conversation at some point in their lives, and it's likely they'll have live it from all sides.
  • Yes, but the point was that it's an uncomfortable subject that will be brought up and in the back of the minds of people. It's more Fridge Sadness than anything.
• Just What If? Twilight DIDN'T believe that Cadance wasn't the fake?
  • Oh, probably something like this.
• Twilight has no ill feelings towards everyone, but What If? she did? How she'll react?
  • While Twilight isn't a pony who holds a grudge, but What If? she rejected Applejack's apology, and joins Queen Chrysalis to spite them?
• Did the Love Spell kill any of the changelings at the end, or are they now simply all over Equestria?
  • More importantly, Chrysalis wasn't imprisoned or otherwise permanently defeated, she's still out there somewhere!
  • Potentially still with her changeling army (they can fly, so simply getting spontaneously kicked out of Canterlot isn't likely to kill them), who can still impersonate anypony at a moment's notice and who are likely still hungry...
    • This is now canon with the comics.
    • The comics aren't canon to the show.
    • As mentioned in the section that says Chrysalis and her changelings were likely to be killed, they didn't seem able to recover with their wings after that impact, and some were shown falling directly towards the ground disappearing from top view. Plus, Chrysalis hasn't returned for over a whole season, comics aside.
  • It should be noted that Shining Armor was able to calibrate his spell to only affect the Changelings and no one and no pony else. Even if it was supercharged by The Power of Love, that proves it would be possible to make a spell that only affects them, which could be used to detect and stop them.
    • On that note, since the spell repelled the changelings (with great force), but didn't damage any of the buildings, what happened to any changelings that were inside when the blast hit?
• Just how long was poor Cadance kept prisoner down in those caves?
  • And what if Chrysalis hadn't sent Twilight to the very same caves so she could find her? Cadance could have easily died down there with nopony any wiser...
  • And there was no sign of any sort of food or water. By the time Twilight came she was probably already on the brink of starvation.
    • Cadance also had her bouquet with her. Ponies have been shown eating flowers before. Maybe to start with it had been a grand thing with roses, ivy, baby's breath, etc. but by the time Twilight showed up it had been nibbled down to some greenery and a few lilies of the valley. That very same bouquet gives evidence that she wasn't there for very long. If she was there longer without sunlight or water, those plants would have dried up.
• If a scuffle between friends was all it took to release Discord in the season opener, what would this military invasion do? Hopefully his petrified self was stored where such conflict couldn't affect him.
  • Specifically (different troper here), it's entirely possible that the original spell already started to fail around the time of Nightmare Moon's banishment — and that it then still took the thousand-odd years since then for it to weaken enough that Discord could finally break free. (Yes, this is straying into WMG territory a bit, but let's give the Elements of Harmony their due: in the right hooves at the right time, they should be able to do better than just "turn this villain into stone until the next time somepony has an argument nearby". If that was the case, Discord would likely have been free again already circa mid-season...)
• Changelings feed on love, and Shining Armor's love for Cadance already put Chrysalis past Celestia-tier. What if Cadance and Shining Armor's combined Power of Love had supercharged Chrysalis? Seems like a hell of a gamble on Cadance and Shining Armor's part.
  • For that matter, if just the love between two ponies was enough to make Chrysalis more powerful than Celestia, how powerful would she and her armies have gotten by feeding on the love of every pony in Equestria?
  • That's assuming she can absorb an infinite amount. It's entirely possible she got blasted into the distance for the simple fact that she blasted was too much at once for her to absorb.
  • No. Firstly, Cadance had broken Shining Armor out of Chrysalis' control so she could no longer feed on his love. Secondly, Chrysalis wasn't defeated by a wave of love magic, she was propelled by the shield spell made successful by the combined love. You see Shining Armor trying to perform the spell a moment before, that is why Cadance helps him.
    • It seems likely that Chrysalis wasn't just feeding on Shining Armour's love for Cadance. This was the capital city of Equestria during the run-up to a royal wedding; romance and romantic love will be going into overdrive. That was noticeable in Vancouver during the run-up to Prince William's wedding; how much stronger would it have been in London? Now scale that up to suit Equestria, the most love-filled land in that world. Small wonder Chrysalis had enough power to match Celestia. To dilute the nightmare fuel potential, remember that this would be Chrysalis, probably the most powerful of changelings, can do at the absolute peak of her possible power. If the changeling make return appearances, Chrysalis might be on Twilight's level at the most, and probably well below that.
• Celestia was held captive in a chrysalis; i.e. the cocoon in which a caterpillar goes to metamorphose into its adult form. And didn't Chrysalis look a lot like a standard Princess pony, albeit corrupted...?
  • This seems unlikely, since Chrysalis mentions while looking out the window at the chaos that this is the sort of day she'd dreamt about since she was small.
  • It might have just been like the cocoons spiders use to hold their prey before eating them. Okay, that's not much better.
• A Chrysalis is used to incubate an entity to bring it into the world in its mature form. What if Chrysalis herself was incubating another entity, and if so, what was it?
  • Chrysalis is probably meant to be a Meaningful Name in that it's what insects use to change into another form. After she beats Celestia and the Princess loses consciousness — where does she wake up? In a chrysalis. Does this mean that the Changelings spin chrysalises around other ponies and change them into creatures like themselves?
    • It might have just been like the cocoons spiders use to hold their prey before eating them. Okay, that's not much better.
• The Changelings beat the manes to the Elements of Harmony; the Changelings had first shot at the most powerful artifacts in Equestria and the ultimate tool of peace, and they were on. Their. Doorstep.
  • If Celestia remotely unlocked the barrier, or allowed the Mane 6 access, then all somepony would need to is to waltz right in, mimic the spell keeper, and empty the vault, and nopony would be the wiser, provided there was a big enough distraction to completely lose track of them. Wait...
  • Does anyone else wonder why Celestia doesn't just let the Mane Six keep the Elements with them, seeing as how they're, ya know, the Freaking BEARERS of the Elements of Harmony?
    • The Mane Six don't need the Elements most of the time, and wouldn't be able to keep them as safe as Celestia.
    • Oh really? And how's that working out for her?
    • Calm down. While the elements are with Celestia, there's not only a powerful sun-moving alicorn protecting them, but the entire Royal Guard. Even if all the elements were given to Twilight, she wouldn't be nearly as powerful as them lot combined, and they'd still need Celestia to give the mane cast their instructions. The only two cases where this didn't work was when a superpowerful draconequus (who wasn't expected to escape) beat Celestia's defenses, and when a changeling queen overpowered Celestia (something that even the changeling queen hadn't expected). The elements are weapons of last resort, so they can't be entrusted to anything less than maximum security.
    • Irrelevant. If a given tactic fails, you change it. If it fails TWICE and at critical junctures, you dump it entirely. On two occasions Equestria was nearly lost because the bearers of the Elements couldn't reach their elements in time. Under no circumstances does keeping the Bearers separate from their Elements make any sort of tactical sense. Keeping the elements locked up has proven LESS safe than simply letting the Bearers keep them.
    • Discord was capable of retrieving the Elements from any location. Removing them from Canterlot and placing them in Twilight's library without anyone noticing showed that. If Twilight had been wearing her tiara when Chrysalis banished her, she could have taken it at that point. Or when the manes were sleeping in Canterlot. Or she would have had changelings attack them at home. Neither of those situations would have been improved by the mane six keeping them. Additionally, given the resources that they possess, the mane six would either put the Elements into a bank fault, or wear them all the time. Since the elements are just fancy jewelry when not in use and the manes lead adventurous lives, they would have been at higher risk of being lost like that.
• The background errors involving Pony clones become much less amusing when you find out about the Changelings; as a matter of fact, think back to the many times you've seen duplicate character models in the same seen at once: were the animators just being lazy or were the Changelings planning their takeover for a very, very long time?
  • And duplicates are still present after this episode, implying changelings are still alive... but there is also possibility that not all changelings follow their queen, and some live lives of peace.
    • Speaking of which, the love of your life? Could be a Changeling feeding off of your love whilst your real love of your life is trapped somewhere.
    • Alternatively; that sweet mare/stallion in which you fall in love, one day reveals to you that she/he are actually insect-like ponies that feed on love. Which goes into both ways: either you reject them because they are love sucking monsters, or you still love them despite their true appearance and now you must live in The Masquerade, hiding from your friends and family the truth about your girlfriend/boyfriend.
    • What if the Changelings found out about Spike's crush on Rarity? One of them would just have to take her place and...
    • This is slightly less frightening since it seems the rest of the Changelings revert to their true form upon being knocked out and it didn't take much to do so.
    • From outside Canterlot, the invasion looked like a swarm of dark creatures descending on the city and breaking Shining Armor's shield. No one outside Canterlot would have any way of knowing they could shapeshift. If they wanted to, the changelings could have hidden the prisoners and morphed to fake a pony victory for as long as they liked, giving them options of time and subtlety in their strategy for the rest of Equestria. Although this assumes Chrysalis could reproduce the cycle of the sun and moon, or make some of her captives do it for her.
  • How many Changelings weren't involved in the attacks and may have very well been living entirely peaceful lives that would have been evicted from Canterlot just for being Changelings?
    • The implication is that they're Always Chaotic Evil.
    • They're probably living in Ponyville, explaining why there are still pony clones around when all of Chrysalis's army is either banished or dead
• Wait... what if...
• The "Holy Shit" moment after Chrysalis defeated Celestia. She clearly hadn't expected to win that fight. Considering her track record (do we actually know HOW LONG Cadance was under Canterlot? Because it certainly LOOKED like it had been awhile), she probably had a backup plan. Anybody else wondering what it would've been?
  • She probably would have continued to gain power from Shining Armor's love until she thought she was powerful enough to defeat Celestia, then go forward with her plan to destroy Canterlot. Also of note: She clearly wasn't at that point by the time Twilight and Cadance exposed her, as she didn't know she was already more powerful than Celestia. But if she had been stronger, Celestia might not have walked away from that fight.
• Celestia showed back in "Lesson Zero" that she has considerably more power than even Twilight, being able to neutralize a spell on the entire town Twilight couldn't with barely any effort. At the end, she tries to blast Chrysalis with an energy beam. Remember that Twilight's magical energy beam can vaporize crystal at full power and consider how powerful Celestia's beam probably was. Just imagine what would've happened if she'd actually hit with it. Not that Chrysalis didn't deserve it but still.
  • Er... Twilight certainly thought she could neutralize the spell on Smarty Pants... she just had trouble hitting the doll in the middle of the scuffle. It's an open question as to whether Celestia's success there was a matter of greater skill, more power, or a combination.
• This is more of Tear Jerker mixed with Fridge Logic, but hearing Rainbow Dash saying "Best Wedding Ever!" isn't really the best thing to say after Canterlot nearly got destroyed, Twilight nearly killing Candence and losing all her friends, and hundreds upon hundreds of ponies getting attacked by Changelings. It echoes back to "Best Night Ever", actually.
  • It could be that Dash decided to accentuate the positive. After all, Queen Chrysalis and her changlings were defeated- by the power of love, no less. Cadance was rescued and reunited with Shining Armor. And without Fake Cadance being all bridezilla, they were able to put together the most fabulous wedding Canterlot had ever seen. Yeah, they had to earn that happy ending, but they got it.
    • Not to mention this is presumably the first wedding where Celestia has her do a Sonic Rainboom. It's in the middle of her Sonic Rainboom where she says "Best wedding ever", which she said in the previous episode before they even met Chrysalis.
• Just what if there never was a changeling invasion and Twilight was wrong? The series is all about friendship but would they Easily Forgiven her again? Or will Twilight be Reformed, but Rejected?
  • Most likely, they all would've eventually forgiven her, but they'd have a more negative view of her.
    • In addition, the series would involve Twilight atoning her mistakes and (as shown in Lesson Zero) she can be scary hard on herself; even if Cadence and everyone else eventually forgave her, she wouldn't forgive herself.
• Do you suppose the others — including Shining Armor, who was brainwashed at the time — ever forgave themselves?
• Let's say that even if they managed to get the Elements on time but only to fail. Twilight may not hold grudges but the elements failing to work because the other Mane Five going against their elements.
• If Cadance's power is love, what if she decided to use it for evil? It's like that Twilight learned that "Want It Need It" spell from her, after all.
  • Think of what Galadriel tells Frodo when he offers her the Ring. 'All shall love me and despair!' indeed.
• When the impostor Cadance said that "No one will find you" to Twilight, she could just mean that no one knows about the caves. But could she mean that no one will actually start to worry and look for Twilight?
  • Probably. From Chrysalis' perspective, if things go to plan, nobody is going to be in a position to mount a rescue if they even notice that Twilight's gone missing. If things don't go to plan, Twilight seems like a reasonable candidate for replacement by a changeling as part of a number of possible contingency scenarios. My interpretation of events, though, is that Chrysalis put Twilight in the caves and taunts her expecting her to kill the real Cadance. If they killed each other, that'd have just been icing, as it would have spared her the trouble of doing it herself.
    • Chrysalis probably assumed that since Twilight had just alienated herself from her friends and family after her outburst at the wedding rehearsal, they all hated her enough that they wouldn't want to look for her.
    • And even if they DID think to look for her, it probably would've already been too late, since both Twilight and Cadence (unless she's immortal) would've died from starvation/thirst.
  • It has been brought up that while Twilight had been right all along, she handled it in an immature way that caused everyone to turn on her; trouble is, suppose she had handled the situation calmly and maturely? She would bring her concerns to Celestia, who might decide to test her student's theory, if only to give her peace of mind: she'd get Fake Cadence alone and strike up a conversation with her, maybe discuss an event with details only the real Cadence would know. When Fake Cadence slips up and reveals herself, she may indeed not yet be strong enough to take Celestia in a magical duel; Chrysalis is captured, yes, and her Evil Plan foiled, but what about Real!Cadence: only Chrysalis knows where she is and do you think she'll be eager to tell?
    • Either that or it'd take an elaborate search party to help locate the real Cadance, especially while there may be some ponies who actually do remember the caves beneath Canterlot despite Chrysalis' insistence that they are long forgotten.
• The reason why Twilight was okay with her friends after they got captured: they had a fight with Changelings that took the form of themselves; whose to say that Twilight didn't take out her frustration and hurt on the Changelings who disguised themselves as the people she would have been upset at the time?
• Everyone focuses on how Twilight was affected by the end of part 1, but let's think about how Celestia must have been feeling. Imagine you are Celestia; Your beloved student, whom you've trusted for years, has only recently nearly gone insane over a trivial matter (her Friendship Reports) and sparked a mass riot over it. After talking to her about it, she promised you that she would control herself in the future. Now flash forward to Canterlot Wedding Part 1. Your beloved student, who has already promised not to repeat the events of Lesson Zero, spends the entirety of the wedding preparations making childish complaints, embarassing her friends with those complaints, and generally making a complete fool of herself. Finally, she bursts into the palace and viciously insults your own niece on the eve of her wedding. And as far as you know, she did all this just because she was overly paranoid of your niece marrying her brother. Is it any wonder why Celestia was so angry?
  • Think about what Celestia was seeing, a pony (that she was very close to) lashing out at their older sibling (to be) out of (seeming) jealousy. Remember the last time Celestia saw that was in her own sister, and the results... it's easy to see why she reacted as harshly as she did, but then Celestia realized she was wrong about it again.
  • Just imagine how Celestia must have felt when she realized that her beloved student was actually right about "Cadance" being evil, even if it never occurred to either Twilight nor anypony else that this "Cadance" was an imposter. You might say that Celestia set a bad example for her own student by forgetting the lesson learned in "Lesson Zero" about taking others' concerns seriously, making herself look like a bad teacher and a hypocrite. In light of all this, though, the lesson she delivered at the end about learning to trust your instincts might be a lesson that Celestia just learned herself.
    • Not only that, but she managed to realize she was right just as the kingdom she swore to protect gets invaded... Her not believing in her student and choosing her niece's comfort over the safety of her subjects during a high security threat nearly cost her everything. No wonder she spoke of the aesop, she was trying to burn it into her memories so she wouldn't make such a fatal mistake again.
    • On a similar note, do you suppose the others — including Shining Armor, who was brainwashed at the time — ever forgave themselves?
  • It could also explain why Celestia took so long to respond to Chrysalis' threat. She was realizing the mistake first hand and was experiencing a Heroic BSoD before getting a Heroic Resolve (which explains why there's so much badassery in her Pre Ass Kicking One Liner.)
• More of a Fridge Tear Jerker really, but notice how Cadance walks down the wedding aisle both times all alone. Normally, the father of the bride gives her away to the groom. Do the math.
  • Notice how most of the wedding party is made of Shining Armor and Twilight's family and friends. Poor Cadance, who practically embodies love, had no visible family or friends in her own wedding — which is also to say, no one who would be close enough to notice her personality change.
    • To add, she is Celestia's niece, and certainly not Luna's daughter (being young and trapped so long) so how was she related to them? Adopted alicorn orphan? Was there a third sibling not linked to the Elements of Harmony?
    • It was revealed in one of the books that Celestia had adopted Cadance, who was a pegasus orphan at the time.
• So, Celestia and Shining Armor failed to protect their kingdom from being attacked. Already, there would have been some serious consequences to be had. Broken homes and people being hurt or worse. We might not have seen the full effect of the invasion, but there's no way that it was just a simple thing to forget. Alright, taking in the ponies' traumatic experience of being attacked in mind, now add this into the equation: What if they found out about Twilight's attempt to warn the others about the false Cadance and Celestia/Shining Armor's response to it? Options range from apathy to a full-blown Richard Nixon style scandal to downright riot.
  • As with any work involving a full-scale attack on a town or city, it's hard not to imagine the number of casualties there, especially if it's not addressed. The only thing freeing thoughts of this possibility is that the ponies were just used as Love-based happy meals and not full-scale food.
    • Still, it won't fix their scars. Some of the victims were kids. We didn't see a lot of what happened during the invasion outside of ponies either running from Changelings, already being held hostage by them, or put into a corner by them, but given how quickly they taken over Canterlot, it's hard not to think there was a single pony unscathed by the incident, mentally or physically.
    • And then comes the bigger problem: provided they have these scars, how would they take the news of what happened at the rehearsal? They'd probably be glad to know their Princess, The Captain of the Royal Guard, five of the wielders of the Elements of Harmony all brushed off the warnings.

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