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My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic / Tropes E to K

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My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic provides examples of the following tropes:

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    E 
  • Early-Bird Cameo:
  • Early-Installment Weirdness:
    • Ponies that have both wings and a horn weren't referred to by the fanon term "alicorn" until season 3.The premiere has the narrator refer to Celestia and Luna as "unicorns". The season 2 script and a 2013 comic later call Chrysalis a "pegacorn".
    • In the first season, Twilight seems to be far more skeptical of the supernatural than in later episodes. Most notably in "Feeling Pinkie Keen" and "Bridle Gossip", where she refuses to just simply accept that Pinkie has an innate sense to know when bad things are about to happen and that curses exist, respectively (though she was admittedly right about the latter in that particular instance). It appears the writers just took the standard Agent Scully bookworm archetype that Twilight is mostly modeled after and ran with it, with Twilight believing the Magic A Is Magic A rules of her universe to be consistent no matter what.
    • It took a while for the visual effects for unicorn magic to be standardized, and even then the Color-Coded Wizardry didn't really show up until "Lesson Zero".
    • The exact nature of unicorn magic seems different early on. In "Boast Busters", unicorn magic appears to be entirely in-born. A unicorn either has an ability, or they don't. However, later episodes seem to suggest that unicorn magic is much closer to Rule Magic, thanks to the appearances of magical schools and spell books, wherein any unicorn's ability to learn a spell is limited only by aptitude at learning magic, rather than by simply being born with a given list of "tricks".
    • The third episode of the series, "The Ticket Master", was the first episode to be written, and it shows — Spike has no interest in Rarity, non-unicorn ponies can somehow levitate the tickets above their heads etc. It's also the lightest episode plot-wise, as it was originally intended for a Two Shorts format.
    • The character designs as originally drawn by Lauren Faust (seen in the main page image) have bigger pupils and irises in their eyes than what's used in the show proper. This eye style was probably dropped because it gave the characters a slightly unsettling look.
    • Zecora has (what closely resembles) a cutie mark. No other species has been shown having a cutie mark (even the other equines, such as the donkeys) and it's eventually explicitly confirmed that ponies are indeed the only species that gets cutie marks. Given that Zecora was the first non-pony equine character introduced in the show, it seems she was just given a cutie mark by default without anyone really thinking about it.
  • Early Personality Signs:
    • Applejack is seen once as a baby asking for apple fritters, showing that she's always loved apples.
    • Thorax was born smiling and scared of his mother Chrysalis, showing that he was the first nice Changeling.
  • Earn Your Happy Ending:
    • In "The Return Of Harmony", the Mane Cast has to do this, especially Twilight Sparkle. Discord breaks and Mind Rapes all of them (except Twilight), turns their homeland into a chaotic World Gone Mad (centered in their hometown of Ponyville, no less), and Twilight crosses the Despair Event Horizon when the Elements Of Harmony won't work because of the previously mentioned events. She was getting ready to pack up and leave before Princess Celestia sends her all the letters she'd sent to her on friendship the previous season. She then has to literally fight her friends to let her use her magic to remind them of all the good times they've shared before they can finally use the Elements Of Harmony to vanquish Discord. They saved all of Equestria and restored their friendship but it was far from easy!
    • "A Canterlot Wedding" is another prime example of this. By the time Celestia finally gets around to declaring the real bride and groom formally married, there's no doubt that both of them have earned it after what they've been through. And of course Twilight Sparkle, after having her suspicions blown off by everypony and for a while seeming to lose her friends, her mentor, and her big brother over it only to have the main villain promptly banish her underground as soon as everypony else has left... ultimately gets them all back and gains a new Cool Big Sis in the bargain.
    • "The Crystal Empire" takes this even further.note 
    • "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 2", even more so than previous seasons. Tirek has left most of Equestria powerless and defeated, sent three of its Princesses to Tartarus, and has more or less become a Physical God. Even Discord is left broken and powerless after betraying Equestria to the tyrannical centaur before being betrayed himself. The Mane Six think all is lost... then get the last Rainbow Key, allowing them to unlock their Rainbow Power forms, defeat Tirek, and restore Equestria, with Twilight finally finding her place as Princess of Friendship. Not to mention that unlocking the Rainbow Power was the culmination of all the Mane Six's hard work, in a subplot that spanned across the entire fourth Season. Earned, indeed.
  • Ear Worm: "Winter Wrap Up" is so catchy that even Discord sings it while bathing. In "Bats!" Pinkie Pie sings "Fruit bat round-up!" to the tune.
  • Easily Forgiven: Many antagonists are forgiven quickly. Justified, considering the series main theme is friendship.
    • Downplayed with Luna. She tried to create eternal night and is immediately forgiven by her sister, the Mane Cast, and Ponyville. However, "Luna Eclipsed" shows that they are still terrified of her.
    • In "MMMystery on the Friendship Express", the Cakes spent months working on a special cake for a dessert competition, hoping to win first place. Pinkie spent a whole night guarding the cake from the other chefs, fearing they wanted to destroy it to eliminate the competition. Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, and Rarity eat roughly half the cake, and yet, Pinkie instantly forgives them when they apologize.
    • A special case in "A Canterlot Wedding"; after essentially disowned by everyone, Twilight Sparkle forgave everyone after one little apology from Applejack. To be fair, there are more important matters at hoof like the Changeling Invasion.
    • Babs Seed from the episode "One Bad Apple" spends most of the episode bullying the Cutie Mark Crusaders, with the worst of it including kicking them out of their own clubhouse and forcing Apple Bloom to sleep on the floor in her own room, but when the CMC find out about how she herself was bullied, and turned to bullying herself because of this, they immediately forgive her, save her from a booby trapped second float they set up for her, and even end up befriending her by the end of the episode. The CMC even apologize for the booby trap first. In the later episode "Apple Family Reunion", Apple Bloom refers to Babs as "my favorite cousin". After all the bullying she did to her, she ends up being her favorite cousin in a family that may very well include hundreds of relatives.
    • And as of the episode "Magic Duel", Trixie, who takes over Ponyville and rules it with an iron hoof, though it takes roughly a second for Twilight Sparkle to accept her apology at the end. This might be at least partially justified due to the Alicorn Amulet.
    • The episode "Keep Calm And Flutter On" involves Fluttershy forgiving Discord, despite the fact that he caused the Mane Six to go Brainwashed and Crazy and causing the World Gone Mad.
      • In that episode, although Discord was forgiven, despite the severity of Discord's actions, the Mane Six really let him off lightly. But Princess Celestia told Twilight that they're keeping the Elements just in case, and that although they've forgiven him, they haven't forgotten.
    • At the end of the episode "Rainbow Falls" Soarin' quickly forgives Spitfire and Fleetfoot, despite the fact that they never visited him at the hospital when he hurt his wing and were planning on replacing him with Rainbow Dash.
    • In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 2", even after he sided with Tirek, Twilight still considered Discord a friend, much to his surprise. This trope also applies to Fluttershy, who Discord is still on good terms with despite hurting her earlier with his betrayal. That said, he does notice he doesn't get a throne along with the others and is told he'll have to earn it, and seemed to regret what he did even before Tirek stabbed him in the back.
  • Eat the Camera:
  • Edible Ammunition: The citizens of Appleloosa use apple pies to repel a buffalo stampede. The entire episode was a metaphor for the American Settlers encroaching on the Native's land. And the pie battle was very intentionally a tame version of a shootout, because you wouldn't get incapacitated by a pie, would you?
    • In "Dragonshy", Applejack demonstrated expert marksmanship with kicked apples. She didn't get to use them against the dragon, but she was ready to.
      • In the same episode, Angel beans Fluttershy with a half-eaten carrot.
    • Catapult-launched pumpkins are a popular part of Nightmare Night celebrations. Presumably, they could be re-purposed for less festive occasions.
    • In "Secret of My Excess", Pinkie Pie tries to fend off Spike by throwing cakes at him. He just catches them instead.
    • In "Magic Duel", Trixie conjures several pies and throws them at Twilight Sparkle, who defends herself by summoning a parasprite.
  • Edible Theme Naming: Applejack. Her entire family qualifies too, given that they're named after brands of, types of, or products made from said fruit.
    • Distant relatives seem to be named after different fruits, such as aunt and uncle Orange.
    • In "Bridle Gossip", when Applejack is shrunk, Spike dubs her "Appletini". (Both names are kinds of alcoholic drinks.)
    • Seems to be a pattern with most (though not quite all) Earth Ponies; Pinkie hails from the Pie family, though makes her living with the Cakes; two of Equestria's founders were Chancellor Puddinghead and her secretary Smart Cookie; even Rose and Daisy could arguably count, since ponies have been seen multiple times eating flowers.
    • Many of the background pony names, too.
  • Edutainment:
    • During the first Season, the show was broadcast with an E/I logo in the upper left corner, but the only real concession it makes to being educational and informative is to have And Knowing Is Half the Battle dialogue at the end of every episode. (These days, simply claiming to encourage positive social values is often enough to allow the use of the logo.) Cable channels aren't required to air E/I programming, but there may be conditions to the partnership between Hasbro and Discovery Channel to form the Hub that the audience doesn't know about. Still, a cartoon that manages to be Edutainment, Merchandise-Driven and genuinely entertaining even for adults all at the same time is a truly astonishing achievement.
      • The E/I mark goes back to the Discovery Kids days; the network adds E/I tags in electronic program listings to make it easier for parents to find actual educational children's programming. Since no other cable network (like Disney Channel, Nickelodeon, Cartoon Network) uses the E/I tag, it's a really big advantage for The Hub to tag their shows E/I.
      • The show could be a Trope Codifier for Stealth Education. The writers are very talented at sneaking in educational tidbits without disrupting the flow of the show — going all the way back to the pilot, where Twilight explains that being "on the precipice (or threshold, or brink) of disaster" means that "something really bad is about to happen", and that "imperative" means "important".
      • A particularly stealthy tidbit they snuck in was actual physics equations for time dilation, like Gamma Correction, in an episode dealing with time travel. Who knew you could learn college-level physics in a TV-Y program?
      • Hasbro has also released guidelines for some episodes for parents that want their kid to learn more.
      • The bug has been absent in Season 2, which left certain fans wondering if Hasbro has ditched the Edutainment aspect of the show. Either that, or The Hub has since deprecated the practice all together.
    • The iOS Edutainment Game Twilight Sparkle: Teacher for a Day is an interactive storybook with two types of educationally-beneficial minigames thrown in. The makers of the game have gone on to make another one, Ruckus Reader.
  • '80s Hair:
  • Either/Or Offspring: Ponies from different races reproducing will never have an offspring who has magic from both races. They will be one or the other or, in rare cases, neither.
  • Eldritch Abomination:
    • Discord, who's made from the body parts of different animals.
    • The Windigoes who are shown to have existed for thousands of years, and will most likely never be completely destroyed as long as hate still exists in Equestria.
  • Eldritch Location: The Everfree Forest is one to the ponies.
    • Discord's home was eventually revealed to be this.
  • Elemental Powers:
    • Rainbow Dash, as a pegasus, can manipulate cloud-borne water to create rain (her profession), and also to create rainbows, as seen most clearly with her stunt in "Boast Busters". Her name also contains the word "rain", despite the fact that one might think that Rainbow Dash, as a great flyer, might also be associated with the air.
    • Rarity can magically locate pockets of precious or semiprecious stones within solid rock, giving her an earth affinity. It is possible that her special talent was originally intended to be this, before being changed to fashion design (she was not originally planned to be a Fashionista, and she was based on Sparkler, a G1 pony who, in the toyline, collected shiny objects).
  • 11th-Hour Superpower:
    • In the episode "Hearth's Warming Eve", when Windigos are attracted by the hatred between the three pony tribe leaders and begin freezing everything, the new friendship between the tribe leaders' assistants manifests as a magical flame that shoots from Clover the Clever's horn, vanquishes the Windigos, and melts the ice along with the leaders' hearts.
    • Towards the end of the two-part season finale "A Canterlot Wedding", when Queen Chrysalis and her Changeling army have taken over Canterlot and left Shining Armor too weak to recast his defensive shield, Princess Cadance casts her love spell on his horn, creating a barrier of love that expels the Changelings.
    • In "Twilight’s Kingdom, Part 2", "Rainbow Power", the force that was locked inside the box, is unlocked after Twilight turns over all the alicorn magic she had been storing and proves to be the key to defeating Tirek. However the key to unlock the box is generated from Discord's artifact he received from Tirek and he's only released after the exchange to turn over the magic to Tirek occurs, meaning Tirek had literally won by the time the Rainbow Power box is unlocked (so it's really more of a "Twelfth Hour Superpower").
  • Embarrassment Plot:
    • In "Molt Down", Spike is going through a developmental dragon phase and finds the symptoms (itchy red scales, smelling bad, random voice pitch changes, and burping out fire) annoying and embarrassing.
    • In "Read It and Weep", Rainbow Dash takes up reading while in hospital and is embarrassed to admit to liking it because she think her friends will tease her for being an "egghead".
    • In "Newbie Dash", Rainbow Dash is embarrassed by being called "Rainbow Crash" at Wonderbolt Academy.
  • Embodiment of Virtue: Each pony in the Mane 6 represents a social virtue:
    • Pinkie Pie represents Laughter (more traditionally known as Mirth).
    • Fluttershy represents Kindness.
    • Applejack represents Honesty.
    • Rainbow Dash represents Loyalty.
    • Rarity represents Generosity.
    • Twilight Sparkle represents Friendship, in the show considered synonymous with the force of Magic.
  • Emotionless Girl: Maud Pie. She is about as emotionless as the rocks she is obsessed with, which is a sharp contrast to her sister Pinkie Pie. She does show slight emotion whenever she talks about how much she loves her sister, or when Pinkie Pie is in extreme danger.
  • Empathic Weapon: The Elements of Harmony. They only work for those who represent their Elements, stop working if the harmony between the users is broken, and can reform from being destroyed.
  • Enchanted Forest: The Everfree Forest, an overgrown wilderness that does not respond to the ponies' control and home to a wide variety of dangerous monsters, magical plants, and strange secrets. The ponies are generally very apprehensive about entering it.
  • End-of-Series Awareness:
    Yona: Yaks know things not forever. That's why smash and rebuild.
  • Enemy Mine: The main plot of "Keep Calm and Flutter On" is to rehabilitate or "reform" the unfrozen Discord so Princess Celestia can use his magic for good.
  • Energetic and Soft-Spoken Duo:
    • Fluttershy is the soft spoken as compared to literally everypony else. But she is particularly contrasted with Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie, who are the most energetic.
    • Rarity is also soft spoken in comparison with Pinkie and Dash, unless she's throwing a dramatic crying fit or tantrum.
  • Energy Absorption: Tirek's power.
  • Engineered Public Confession: Double Subverted in "Viva las Pegasus". Fluttershy disguises herself as a pony named Impossibly Rich in an attempt to trick Gladmane into telling how he handles his employees over a microphone, only for him to see right through the trick. Then when Gladmane gloats about getting the upper hand, Fluttershy has her hoof on the button to his loudspeaker.
  • Epunymous Title: Episodes include:
    • "Dragonshy" (the character who saves the day is Fluttershy, who is gunshy about dragons)
    • "Feeling Pinkie Keen" (after Pinkie Pie's "Pinkie Sense")
    • "Luna Eclipsed" (Princess Luna deals with being "eclipsed" by her previous Nightmare Moon image)
    • "Sonic Rainboom" (after Rainbow Dash's "sonic rainboom")
  • Escort Distraction: Happens in "Castle Sweet Castle": In a prior episode, the Golden Oak Library, Twilight's home in Ponyville, gets destroyed by Tirek. In place, she now lives in the newly emerged Castle of Friendship, but it turns out Twilight doesn't feel home in there. Her friends try to surprise her by remodeling the castle, so they enlist Spike to keep Twilight distracted until they're done.
  • Et Tu, Brute?:
    • A comedic example happens in the episode, "Party Of One". Pinkie Pie assumes that her friends are turning their backs on her after Spike said that they don't like her parties anymore. As it turns out, her friends are setting up a birthday party for her without telling her about it.
    • A brainwashed example occurs in the two-parter episode, "The Return Of Harmony". In that episode, Discord, knowing about The Power of Friendship, brainwashes the True Companions into turning against each other. After a Circle of Shame by the Discord's balloons, which tells her that her friends are laughing about her behind her back, corrupted Pinkie Pie's reply to Twilight Sparkle is to be expected when she and the corrupted Applejack found her:
    Twilight Sparkle: Pinkie Pie! Are we glad to see you!
    Pinkie Pie: Oh you are, huh? Why? Need a good laugh?
    • To say nothing about how poor Twilight felt when one by one, her friends are acting different from themselves, and when Rainbow Dash went flying out of the maze after what Applejack told her.
    Applejack: (watching as Rainbow Dash went flying out of the maze) Well, looky there. Rainbow Dash is flying away. She's abandonin' us.
    Twilight Sparkle: Now I know that's a lie. How can it be?
    • A relatively mild example occurs in the episode "Ponyville Confidential". When the Gabby Gums column begins to print false-but-still-damaging stories of the Mane Six, it's initially suggested to Rarity that since Sweetie Belle works for the school paper, she might know who GG is. Rarity is immediately offended by the implication that her sister would associate with a pony with such blatant disregard for everypony's feelings. Her tune changes immediately once she discovers Sweetie Belle stole Rarity's diary and published it. To drive this home, Rarity confronts Sweetie with "Et tu, Gabby Gums?".
    • In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 2", Fluttershy is the only of the Mane Six who seems wholly shocked by Discord's betrayal.
      • Before her, Shining Armor is likewise stunned that Discord would turn his back on them.
      • Discord gets hit with this moments later by Tirek, who he seemed to have thought was actually his friend. It causes Discord to, for the first time in the series, be broken.
  • Everybody Cries: Subverted in "Tanks for the Memories". When Rainbow Dash sobs knowing that Tank has to leave her to hibernate, the others join in.... except for Twilight and Applejack. We then learn from Pinkie Pie that she was crying because Twilight wasn't and that Applejack "cries on the inside".
    (Nearly every pony cries when we see Applejack taking off her hat)
    Twilight: You, too?
    Applejack: Nope, I'm good.
  • "Everybody Laughs" Ending: Several episodes end with this; see the individual recap articles for specifics.
  • Evil Cannot Comprehend Good:
    • The biggest weakness of Discord is his inability to truly understand how strong the bond between the Mane Cast truly is. He's taken completely off-guard when he discovers that they've reforged their friendship after he seemingly broke it apart leading to his defeat. He also gets very frustrated when Fluttershy proves too kind and accepting of her own faults to fall for his attempt to convince her her friends think she's weak and helpless and thus she should be mad at them. This makes sense when one considers he's the polar opposite of the Elements of Harmony, which run on the Power of Friendship. It may also be another of the apparent Shout Outs to Him, who shared this weakness as well. Ironically, in his second appearance he not only manages to comprehend it in the end, the act of doing so is what redeems him, as his new found friendship with Fluttershy makes him unable to bring himself to do anything to jeopardize it.
    • Queen Chrysalis, the Big Bad of the second Season Finale, also has this problem. She's the sadistic, shapeshifting, succubus-like Queen of the Changelings who stole Princess Cadance's identity to feed off the love her husband-to-be had for her. In the end, she doesn't once think that this same power could be turned against her. To her, it was just food and she didn't understand its true power.
    • In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 1", during his Hannibal Lecture to Discord, Tirek dismisses his brother's befriending of ponies so many years ago as a sign of a weak mind. More generally, he considers friendship just another form of imprisonment.
    • In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 2", Tirek cannot understand friendship, and is confused when Twilight demands Discord's release after he betrayed them. It is this mistake that leads to his defeat and re-imprisonment for eternity.
  • Evil Counterpart:
    • Nightmare Moon to Luna
    • Chrysalis to Cadance
    • Trixie to Twilight (in "Magic Duel", at least)
    • Daybreaker to Celestia
  • Evil Counterpart Race: Changelings to ponies.
  • Evil Is Petty: While Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon aren't necessarily evil, for some reason they go out of their way to mock the foals in their class that don't have cutie marks yet.
  • Evil Laugh: Nightmare Moon and Discord. Spike also gets one in "Owl's Well That Ends Well".
    • Fluttershy of all ponies gets one in "The Best Night Ever".
    • Queen Chrysalis adores this trope, getting one several times in the first part of the two-part Season 2 finale, and about once every five minutes, give or take, in the second part.
    • Cozy Glow seems to like doing this as well.
  • Evil Plan:
    • Nightmare Moon's "everlasting night" plan in the pilot.
    • For a god of chaos, Discord is incredibly strategic about getting his "rulership" (AKA position to make up extremely creative and nonsensical torments for everyone) of Equestria back.
    • Queen Chrysalis's "first Canterlot, then all of Equestria" plan in the Season 2 finale.
  • Evil Sounds Deep:
    • Nightmare Moon of the pilot has a pretty deep voice and a great Evil Laugh. Justified by the fact that her larger stature (roughly 1.5 times the size of the main characters) would give her longer vocal cords, and thus a lower-pitched voice.
    • Zig-Zagged by Discord, who, being voiced by John de Lancie, has a somewhat high-pitched voice. However, he's got a great range, and there are several lines where it sounds deeper than normal.
    • King Sombra of the Season 3 opener has a very deep voice indeed.
    • At first in "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 1", Lord Tirek's voice is frail and old, but he later gains a deep, booming voice as he returns to his original power.
  • Evolving Credits:
    • The opening credits are updated in "Lesson Zero", including the Cutie Mark Crusaders, Big Macintosh, more background ponies, and the Friendship Express Train, as well as an additional appearance of Canterlot and the mountains in the background. In "Sisterhooves Social", parts of the Friendship Express Train were recolored and/or rearranged, making it and its Nursery Train Car the same color as they are in the show proper and in the toys. The song itself was also rerecorded, which has been used for all subsequent seasons.
    • Season 4 adds Discord in Fluttershy's house and has the photo of the girls expanded to feature much of the extended cast, and Luna joins Celestia in opening it at the end.
    • Season 5's opening features Twilight's new castle instead of the library to reflect the changes from Season 4's finale.
    • Season 6 tweaks the cast photo, adding Starlight Glimmer and making changes to the CMC, reflecting events from Season 5.
    • Season 7 has Starlight Glimmer no longer looking nervous in the cast photo. The logo has changed colors to match with the one from the comics and My Little Pony: The Movie (2017).
    • Bizarrely, the closing credits in the first two season never reflected the episode, listing the same set of voice actors and roles for every episode regardless of which characters were present or absent. Season 3 started using proper credits.
    • Season 8's opening features a complete revamp from the ground-up in the largest change to the opening since the show began. New scenes highlight things that have changed in the ponies' lives since the show started (Rarity opening the Canterlot Boutique, Rainbow Dash joining the Wonderbolts, Fluttershy constructing her animal sanctuary, etc.), as well as showing the Friendship School that forms a big piece of the overarching plot of Season 8. The end shot of the throne room is also updated with the throne room itself being redesigned to be more in line with the movie's design and adding Princess Cadance, Shining Armor, and Flurry Heart.
  • Exactly What It Says on the Tin: Episodes include:
  • Exact Words: "You simply must stop reading those dusty old books!" is not the same thing as "I don't believe you." This is all part of the Princess' Batman Gambit, though.
    • Also done by Applejack, otherwise known for her honesty and integrity, when racing against Rainbow Dash with her wings tied up in "Fall Weather Friends", in which she has no problem hitching a ride on the Twinkling Balloon after Rainbow Dash sent her wildly off-track. Her justification?
      Rainbow Dash: What the hay—you said no flying!
      Applejack: No, I said no wings.
    • In "The Return Of Harmony, Part 2", Discord points out that he never said the Elements Of Harmony were in the maze. Twists and turns were his master plan, but it had nothing to do with the Elements.
    • In "Swarm of the Century", Twilight casts a spell to make the parasprites "stop eating all the food". It works perfectly — the parasprites start eating everything but food.
    • In "May the Best Pet Win!":
      Rainbow Dash: But I said whoever crosses the finish line with me gets to be my pet.
      Pinkie Pie: You did! You did say that! She did say that, that was the rule!
    • In "The Last Roundup":
      Applejack: If y’all reckon back, I told you that I would tell you everything at breakfast! But I didn’t come to breakfast! I couldn’t come to that breakfast! Not if it meant tellin’ y’all what happened!
  • Expanded Universe: The Gameloft app and the IDW comic series serve as the show's first real bits of Expanded Universe stories. Before those, there are mostly just short stories and stock-art comics that can be found in different countries' My Little Pony magazines and/or Sparkle World magazine, but they... don't follow the show very well.
  • Expository Theme Tune: "I used to wonder what friendship could be/Until you shared its magic with me..."
  • Expy: Rainbow Dash is one Captain Ersatz of the G1 pony Firefly.
    • Pipsqueak is very similar to Mac.
      • And Granny Smith is very similar to Madame Foster from the same show.
    • Parasprites are flying Tribbles. Exact same MO. Mass breeders, extremely cute, and eat everything.
    • The Power Ponies are based on comic heroes. Radiance is the Green Lantern, Saddle Rager is the Hulk, Fili-second is The Flash, Humdrum is Robin, Zap seems to be Storm (with, shades of Thor thrown in, if you take the 2014 comic book annual into account), Mistress Marevelous is Wonder Woman, and Masked Matter-horn is Iceman.
  • Extreme Omnivore:
    • Pinkie Pie has shown a willingness to eat virtually anything, eating cupcakes with hot sauce and ashen lumps that are supposedly cupcakes without complaint. Her first reaction to seeing a vat of liquid rainbow was to taste it, and it's the only thing she's complained about the flavor of on-screen — although she had some bizarre muffins that made her sick, she didn't actually comment on their flavor. So she's probably an Extreme Herbivore at best.
    • Her sister Maud has no problem crunching into hunks of crystal, and she taught Pinkie the family's rock candy recipe — which uses actual rocks as one ingredient.
    • Spike definitely qualifies — he prefers eating gemstones, but can and often will eat literally anything. Including eating and enjoying the above-mentioned muffins. After seeing a live earthworm stick its head out of one. In "Inspiration Manifestation", Spike eats a whole book without ill effects.
    • There's also the Parasprites. Twilight tried to stop them from eating all the food by casting a spell to make them stop eating food. They started eating everything else.
    • Rarity and Sweetie Belle's parents enjoyed the latter's horrible food, which included ashes (burnt juice) and a bowl of bubbling ooze (toast).
    • Discord, reality warping Anthropomorphic Personification of chaos that he is, once drank a glass containing chocolate milk, then tossed aside the chocolate milk. Another time he ate a bowl of paper, specifically the pages of Twilight's spellbooks that had the spell she was looking for.
  • Eye Cam: Used a few times from the point of view of Applejack, Rarity and Rainbow Dash respectively. Used with the the first two characters when regaining consciousness from fainting and the latter when she's waking up from an accident.
  • Eye-Dentity Giveaway: Zigzagged in "Frenemies". When in her cragadile, goat, and ophiotaurus forms, the shapeshifter Queen Chrysalis retains her distinctive blue-green eyes with concentric sclerae and slit pupils. While this is absent in her ursa form, several of its component stars shine the same color as her eyes. Her roc and monkey forms don't bear any signs of this, however.
  • Eyedscreen:
  • Eye Poke: Twilight attempts to perform a "Pinkie Promise":
    Twilight Sparkle: Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my AUGH!

    F 
  • Face Fault:
    • The other ponies in "Dragonshy" when Fluttershy is too scared to go in the cave.
    • Rainbow Dash in "Sonic Rainboom", again because of Fluttershy. This time because she just can't get an outdoor voice "yay" from her.
  • Face Palm:
    • Twilight's typical response to the strange happenings around her.
    • The other Ponies get in on it too, with Rainbow Dash doing a Double Facehoof at times.
    • Angel Bunny does a facepaw whenever he finds Fluttershy frustrating.
    • One of the Diamond Dogs facepaws when Rarity is aggravating him.
    • Spike faceclaws from time to time.
    • In "Inspiration Manifestation", Owlowiscious simulates this with his flight feathers when Spike reads the cover page of the book and says "I'm likin' the looks of this one!". Even more impressive in that he used one of his wings to do it while in mid-flight, and still remained airborne.
    • In "Equestria Games", Spike's cringe-worthy attempt at the Cloudsdale anthem naturally induces this to much of the audience (both in and out of universe).
    • Now compiled in this handy compilation! Begins at 2:45.
  • Face Plant: Happens to most of the mane characters at one time or another.
    • Apple Bloom has this as a running joke in "Hearts and Hooves Day".
    • Happens to Spike in "Inspiration Manifestation", when he tries walking in the bulky crystal armour Rarity puts him in.
    • In "Equestria Games", when Spike is brought before Cadance upon arriving in the Crystal Empire, he falls face-first on the ground when the guards transporting him come to a halt.
  • Faceplanting into Food:
    • In "A Bird in the Hoof", Fluttershy is looking after Celestia's apparently-sick pet bird Philomena and serves her a bowl of soup. Philomena apparently passes out right into the soup. Subverted, since it turns out that Philomena isn't sick at all, just about to enter her burning cycle (she's a phoenix) and she faked all her symptoms besides the molting.
    • In "Castle Sweet Castle", Twilight avoids living in her new castle by helping her friends with their chores. At the breakfast Twilight holds for her friends, she falls asleep at the table and uses the pancakes as a pillow.
  • Fade Around the Eyes:
    • The villainess Queen Chrysalis in disguise as Princess Cadance does this at one point in her Villain Song. Significant in that, when the screen fades to black, we see her real eyes, instead of those of the princess.
    • Grogar does this at the very end of part 2 of "The Beginning of the End" as he forces Tirek, Chrysalis, and Cozy Glow to work with him following the Mane Six destroying Sombra. Similar to Chrysalis' example, when the screen fades to black, we seem to get a glimpse of his real eyes — from his true form of Discord.
  • Failure Is the Only Option: The Cutie Mark Crusaders' attempts to gain their cutie marks always fail, because otherwise there couldn't be more episodes about them attempting to gain their cutie marks. Subverted in Season 5, at long last!
  • Failure Montage:
    • "The Show Stoppers" has a montage early on featuring the Cutie Mark Crusaders trying and failing at various tasks in attempts to get their Cutie Marks.
    • The Mane Cast during the "What My Cutie Mark is Telling Me" song in "Magical Mystery Cure". All of them except for Twilight Sparkle are shown trying, and failing, to do one another's jobs.
    • The Cutie Mark Crusaders, yet again, in the "Hearts as Strong as Horses" song in "Flight to the Finish". In this case the Failure Montage leads up to eventual success through teamwork.
    • "Pinkie Pride" has Pinkie Pie, feeling overshadowed as resident Party Planner Pony, trying out other jobs including operating room nurse, mailmare, and construction worker.
  • Faint in Shock:
    • Rarity in-universe acknowledges that she does this all the time, to the point that she has a special couch to faint onto... Some standout occasions:
      • Twice during the episode "Bridle Gossip" First, when she hears that mysterious zebra Zecora's stripes are not a fashion choice, but something she was born with, and then again when the other ponies list the "horrors" of the Everfree Forest.
      • In "A Dog and Pony Show" when Sapphire Shores asks her to make five more dresses in addition to the one she just made.
    • Happens twice in "Applebuck Season".
      • Applejack ends up fainting after believing she's finished her apple-picking all by herself, only to be shown an acre that still needed to be picked. In the latter case, it's likely justified, as Applejack was suffering from severe sleep deprivation in addition to the shock, thus crossing over with the Exhaustion Faint.
      • In that same episode, this trope is parodied when a Flower Sister faints when faced with a bunny stampede (normal-sized bunnies, mind you, who were rather harmless).
  • Fake-Hair Drama: In "Ponyville Confidential", Fluttershy is driven to tears by the newspaper gossip columnist accusing her of getting tail extensions.
  • Fake Wizardry: Played With in the episode "Magic Duel". Twilight Sparkle, a magical unicorn prodigy, defeats her rival, Trixie (who was using an Amplifier Artifact of Doom to cast more powerful magic spells), by using a useless Magic Feather trinket and stage magic tricks to simulate even more powerful magic that Trixie was unable to do and fool her into taking off the Artifact to get the Magic Feather (and therefore removing her powerful magic amplifier).
  • False Camera Effects: There is a Lens Flare in the opening animation.
  • Familial Chiding: A series that focuses on friendship and how to be a better person, there are a few instances of this.
    • "Gryphon the Brush Off" has Fluttershy, who was recently bullied by Gilda, wonder about the wisdom of Pinkie Pie's plans to throw a party for Gilda.
      Pinkie Pie: Don't worry your pretty little head about mean old Gilda. Your auntie Pinkie Pie's got it all taken care of.
      Fluttershy: (irked) I'm a year older than you.
    • After Discord learns that the Elements of Harmony have been returned to the Tree of Harmony, and he cannot be turned to stone by them again, Fluttershy calls him out on his seeming eagerness to return to his former ways.
      Fluttershy: But our friendship remains. And if you want to remain friends, you'll stop thinking whatever it is you're thinking and help us clean up.
      Discord: Fine. But I don't do windows.
  • Fancy Camping: Rarity bring a two-story tent on the camping trip with Sweetie Belle, Scootaloo and Rainbow Dash. She even adorns the place with flowers in a fancy vase.
  • Fanservice: Of the non-sexual variety. After Derpy Hooves took off within the fandom, animators started including her more and more often, sometimes in a scripted event and other times as a Funny Background Event — to the point that spotting her has become a Where's Waldo?-esque game in some circles.
    • However, by far the largest example of this is in "The Last Roundup", when the name Derpy for Derpy Hooves was made canon, as well as giving her a voice!
      • And then, when the name caused considerable backlash, she returned to being unnamed.
    • The entire impetus behind Episode 100, "Slice of Life"; which includes Derpy Hooves in a major speaking role, as well as multiple other background and one-shot ponies (and Chinese river dragons) in smaller speaking roles. References to fanon and fan-works abound.
    • Played straight whenever Tara Strong decides to troll the fandom.
    • IDW's official comics are chock full of fanon shout-outs, although they also sneak in some played-straight fanservice once in awhile. It's not really more fanservicey than one might expect from a G-rated comic, though included are some sultry character poses and subtle ship teasing (Rarity's micro series issue has some of the more obvious examples thus far).
  • Fansub: An official Mexican My Little Pony website used Wonderbolts Fansub's Spanish one of "A Canterlot Wedding, Part 1", leaving in the group's credits and even a MediaFire URL to download the first two seasons with Spanish fansubs.
  • Fantastic Aesop:
  • Fantastic Caste System: Downplayed but still there. Only the pegasi can control weather, only the unicorns can use magic (which, because magic effectively gives them fingers, means they dominate the traditional artisan professions), and earth ponies have an innate ability to work the ground. Ponies have found ways to employ their powers in more personal ways, but on the whole the society seems to fall on these three genetic lines.
  • Fantastic Flora:
    • Poison Joke is a wild flower causes maliciously humorous, often ironic afflictions on those who come in contact with it.
    • "The Cutie Pox" features two: Heart's Desire is a plant with heart-shaped flowers that can, if eaten, grant someone their greatest desire. The Seeds of Truth are another flower that only grows when true words are spoken, and which can undo the effects of Heart's Desire.
    • Zap Apples are a magical variety of apple tree that only grows its rainbow-colored fruit after a series of ominous signs (including a lightning storm and swarms of crows).
    • Dragon-sneeze trees grow large flowers that induce violent, fiery sneezing fits in dragons.
    • The plot of "A Health of Information" is precipitated by the effects of a flowering tree whose pollen induces swamp fever, a sickness that begins with annoying but harmless effects (spotting and coughing up bubbles), develops more serious symptoms (sneezing out lighting bolts) and ultimately sees the afflicted person sprout branches and turn into another tree of the same species.
    • In "Growing Up Is Hard to Do", Twilight and Fluttershy are studying a mysterious flower that can grant wishes, at the cost of needing to consume a petal for each wish granted.
  • Fantastic Naming Convention:
    • Pony names are simple one- or two-word constructs with literal meanings relating to their appearance, talents and/or personality. While Western-style surnames have occurred from time to time, most families in the show seem to go for Family Theme Naming (such as the Apples, who are all named after apple cultivars or apple-based products, and Pinkie Pie's relatives, who are all named after types of rock). Although there are plenty of exceptions, there are also noticeable naming trends within the three tribes of ponies:
      • Most earth pony names derive from words relating to the earth, plants and food.note 
      • Pegasus names tend to involve flying, weather and the sky.note At one point, this led to a Who's on First? situation when some pegasus weather workers couldn't figure out whether the phrases "Clear Skies", "Open Skies" and "Fluffy Clouds" referred to the weather or each other.
      • Unicorn names often derive from celestial objects and phenomena, usually but not always nighttime ones.note This seems to be the least prevalent of the three naming trends.
    • Griffon names are mostly "regular" human names, with one caveat — every one of themnote  starts with the letter "G".
    • Dragon names tend to be short, one- to two-syllable words usually referring to body parts, noises or something to do with fire.note 
    • Changelings use names derived from arthropod anatomy and biology, usually ones with emphasis on sibilants.note 
    • The hippogriffs/seaponies mostly have names composed of two words, either separated by a space or as a single compound word, pertaining to either the sky.note  or the seanote 
  • Fantastic Racism:
    • Prejudice between the pony tribes was the central issue that brought the Windigos to their homelands in "Hearth's Warming Eve". Still in the present, the Canterlot elite (chiefly unicorns) look down on the rural farming towns (traditionally and predominately earth ponies) as yokels (even if they may "appreciate their work ethic").
    • In "Over a Barrel", there is animosity between the ponies and the bisons over land rights, in a way inspired by conflicts between native Americans (the bison) and U.S. settlers (the ponies). It has more to do with differing opinions than species, however, and ultimately given the opportunity to talk to each other they easily settle their issues.
    • Ponies tend to have a very low opinion of dragons, which they see as brutes at best and beasts at worst. The dragons fully reciprocate this — they tend to see ponies as either contemptible weaklings or convenient snacks, when they bother to acknowledge them at all.
    • Chancellor Neighsay is very distrustful of the other "creatures", to the point of closing Twilight's School unless she acquiesced to only accepting ponies. He ceases to be a racist after the multi-species Student Six help him escape his chains.
  • Fantasy Conflict Counterpart: "Over a Barrel" deals with a scenario much like early America's Indian Wars, settlers taking over the natives' ancestral land for their own purposes, without native consent, which in turn cranks off the natives. Due to the nature of the show, things get resolved before they escalate too far.
  • Fantasy Counterpart Culture:
    • Zecora the zebra is obviously supposed to be from an African counterpart culture, given her accent and the fact that that her hut is decorated with stylized African masks. She was even meant to speak Swahili in her few foreign language lines, but the staff couldn't find a translator in time and resorted to writing invented words that mimic the general sound of Swahili. The canon explanation is that Zecora "speaks Zebra".
    • The buffalo tribe in "Over a Barrel" were obviously supposed to be the Plains Indians in the "Cowboy Settlers vs. Native Indians" setup of the episode.
    • Pinkie Pie apparently grew up on what is supposed to be a fantasy counterpart Amish rock farm — complete with the conservative fashion, wide brim hat-and-sideburns-wearing father, and parents sleeping in separate beds.
    • Pegasus ponies in general seem to take some influence from classic Greek culture (which makes sense, considering pegasi are creatures from Greek mythology). Their architecture and fashion seem decidedly Hellenistic, and they were portrayed as a Sparta-like martial culture in "flashback" to the past, such as "Hearth's Warming Eve" and "Campfire Tales".
    • Meanwhile, the other two types of ponies both represent Western Europe, but apparently evolved socially at different rates: In the aforementioned "Hearth's Warming Eve", the unicorns are stuck in The High Middle Ages with a feudal monarchy, while the earth ponies dress like continental Europeans (from France, the Netherlands, and Germany in particular) during The Renaissance and have elected a chancellor.
    • The setting of the Daring Do book series is quite plainly a pulp fiction-style depiction of South America, complete with Mayincatec stone ruins and a villain, Ahuizotl, taken from Aztec mythology.
    • The Crystal Empire, which blends late-Victorian architecture, Crystal Spires and Togas fashion sense, and medieval/Renaissance sporting events.
    • "Magic Duel" features visiting delegates from Saddle Arabia, which is a stand-in for... well, guess. An interesting note is that its male delegate carries a crescent moon coat-of-arms, and Saudi Arabia does not have this as its crest, although many of its neighboring countries do.
    • "The Lost Treasure of Griffonstone" introduces the Kingdom of Griffonstone, whose culture seems to be caught somewhere between the Urals and the Caucasian mountains (primarily Georgian, Armenian and Kazakh cultures) with a dash of Tibet and Mongolia to round out the society's remote mountainous flair.
    • Whereas Griffonstone mostly scratches Mongolian culture, Yakyakistan all but embraces it, combining Mongolian aesthetics with temper and attitude not unlike those of Vikings.
    • In "Campfire Tales", Mistmane's homeland, from its architecture to its culture to its dress styles, is openly based on eastern Asia.
    • The desert village in southern Equestria seen in "Daring Done?" and in Somnabula's issue of Legends of Magic is heavily reminiscent of ancient Egypt. It is located close to ancient pyramids, its present citizens all seem to wear kohl and, in Somnabula's time, its residents all wore distinctly Egyptian clothing, the area was explicitly ruled by a Pharaoh, and the beginning of the flashback segment recounting Somnabula's tale is in the form of animated hieroglyphics.
    • In the present day, locations in Equestria are based on different cultures of different eras:
      • Ponyville seems to be based on 17th to 19th century Europe with their building's architecture mostly being timber-framed cottages which were popular in places like England, France, Germany, Scandinavia, Scotland, and Switzerland from the Renaissance age to the 19th century.
      • Cloudsdale is based off ancient Greece.
      • Manehattan is roughly based off 1940's New York City but with all the cars replaced with horse-drawn carriages, some of which painted like yellow checker cabs.
      • Appleloosa is a 19th century American wild-west settlement, similar to those seen in Westerns.
      • Canterlot seems to be inspired by 20th century London with a dash of Paris — both from an architecture and socio-economic standpoint. This is strengthened in "A Hearth's Warming Tail", which is an adaptation of A Christmas Carol, which takes place in 19th century London.
    • In "Equestria Games", in addition to the Saddle Arabians (who are more horse-like than pony), there are pony-like delegates from other cultures: a mare with a half-sun-like headdress akin to the Incan or Mayan culture, and a stallion with a very Mesopotamian headdress, beard, and hair/mane style. We later find that these two are representatives from Maretonia.
    • In "The Hooffields and the McColts", the titular feuding clans are very clearly Appalachian hillbillies.
    • Curiander Cumin and Saffron Masala, a father-and-daughter pair who appear in "Spice Up Your Life", are very Indian in their names, appearance, and in the style of the restaurant they keep. Cumin specifically mentions that they moved to Canterlot from a distant part of Equestria.
  • Fantasy Counterpart Map: Equestria at first was sort of based on North America, with many Equestrian cities being located roughly in the same place as their real-life counterparts, such as Manehattan, Fillydelphia, and Baltimare on the east coast, with Vanhoover and Las Pegasus on the west. When Equestria was later expanded, the cities remained in roughly the same place, but the continent looked far less like North America.
  • Fantasy Landmark Equivalent: The Statue of Liberty is depicted as a pony in this universe's New York equivalent Manehatten.
  • Fantasy Kitchen Sink: The series draws heavily on several mythologies, ranging from ancient Greece to the Americas.
    • Two of the main species of ponies are unicorns and pegasi.
    • The non-pony sentient species in the series include griffons, dragons, and at least one centaur, a minotaur, a chimera, and an Ahuizotl.
    • The less-sentient species in the series include a manticore, a cockatrice, Cerberus, an Orthros, and a jackalope.
  • Fantasy World Map: An official map has been present for a while, but has evolved and been added to fairly consistently over the course of the show. The original version released was fairly simplistic and mostly showed Equestria itself and some areas around its borders. The second version, released around Season 5, edited and retconned some of the old geography to include newer locations and expanded to cover some areas beyond what the old map did; the journey to A.K. Yearling’s house in the episode Daring Don't can be retraced on it. The third update, released for the movie, is chiefly an extension of the second, tacking on new lands to the south of the previous areas. As a whole, these maps make abundant use of Here There Be Dragons.
  • Fascinating Eyebrow:
    • Princess Celestia does this near the end of "Lesson Zero", as Twilight's friends are taking the blame for her casting a spell that makes the entire town fight over a doll so that she could learn some sort of lesson about friendship to send her for that week.
    • Octavia, one of the many fan-favourite background characters, pulls this expression in "The Best Night Ever" when Pinkie makes a request. Even her wiki page used it.
    • Well, well, well. It seems we have some neigh-sayers among the Tropers! Even if Celestia and Octavia can pull off the Fascinating Eyebrow, the fact remains that THE GREAT AND POWERFUL TRIXIE can do it better! In fact, she does it at least one time other than during her episode.
    • Applejackhas a pretty good one as of Season 4.
    • Owlowiscious' design doesn't really allow for much of one, but in "Inspiration Manifestation" he's definitely giving the same spirit in his look at Spike when Rarity starts going off the deep end.
  • Fashion-Shop Fashion Show: Twilight and Fluttershy go through this, courtesy of Rarity. Though Twilight doesn't buy anything and Fluttershy was just modeling.
  • The Fashionista: Not only is Rarity the proprietor of the Carousel Boutique, but there's an entire fashion industry in Equestria including designer Hoity Toity, photographer Photo Finish, print advertising campaigns, and trend-following audiences at fashion shows who can't seem to form opinions of their own.
  • Feather Fingers: This was averted initially. Ponies use their mouths, magic, or sometimes even tails to manipulate objects as long as it can be made to work. However, later Season 2 episodes features ponies using their hooves as hands more often, or in the case of pegasus characters (Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy), a literal feather finger.
    • In "Hurricane Fluttershy", the titular character tries to improve her flying by training, including doing wing "push-ups".
    • In "Inspiration Manifestation", Owlowiscious simulates a facepalm with his flight feathers when Spike reads the cover page of the book and says "I'm likin' the looks of this one!". Even more impressive in that he used one of his wings to do it while in mid-flight, and still remained airborne.
      • When Spike fails to tell Rarity how inappropriate the birdhouse makeover is, Owlowiscious folds his wings and feathers in a manner that resembles fists on his hips when giving Spike a disparaging glare.
  • Felony Misdemeanor: Only Rarity understands what a "crime against fabulosity" ruining the water serpent's mustache was.
    • Pinkie Pie's extreme attitude towards keeping secrets, which leads her to stalk Twilight all over town reminding her that she risks losing Rarity's and Fluttershy's friendship FOREVER! In a bizarre attempt to drive the point home, she takes an apple... and eats it. Possibly a representation of Twilight's head, considering her reaction to Applejack breaking her Pinkie Promise in "The Last Roundup".
    • In "Over a Barrel", everypony (and buffalo, and dragon) reacts to Chief Thunder Hooves getting a Pie in the Face as if he'd been mortally wounded.
    • In "Applebuck Season" the stampeding baby rabbits have devoured every plant in every pony's gardens.
    • In "Swarm of the Century" a parasprite ate Bon Bon and Lyra Heartstrings's cakes. Which made Lyra cry.
  • Feud Episode:
  • Fictional Accent: The Breezies speak in a language and with a matching accent that seem to be a blend of Swedish and Scottish.
  • Fictional Flag: Equestria is occasionally shown as using a flag depicting Celestia and Luna flying around a sun-and-moon symbol against a light blue background. The Crystal Empire has a flag showing the Crystal Heart, surrounded by a crystalline snowflake pattern, on purple.
  • Filling the Silence:
    • In the Italian dub, the characters are a bit more "vocal" than in English: Lyra Heartstrings shouts "Ciao!...oh?" in the first episode and other characters seem to growl where there were just silent glares before. Oddly, the dragon in "Dragonshy" has the original "dog whimper" and an Italian "dubbed whimper" at the same time when it was being scolded by Fluttershy. In "A Canterlot Wedding", the Changelings make grunts the whole time.
    • The Japanese dub has characters make grunts where they were originally silent. One particularly noticeable instance is when Featherweight is heard making a couple of grunts in the Japanese version of "Ponyville Confidential", while he didn't even have a voice actor in the original. When Trixie flees the town when she's discovered to be a fraud, in the original, she said nothing, but in the Japanese version, she shouts "I'll remember this!" as she runs away. When Spike opens the door in "Feeling Pinkie Keen", a sound effect plays of a truck backing up as he backs out of the door. The Japanese dub, however, adds a bit of Cultural Translation by having Spike say the voice clip that plays when trucks back up in Japan: "Bakkushimasu, gochuui kudasai (Backing up, please be careful)."
    • The Finnish dub does this as well, especially to Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie and (sometimes) Fluttershy.
  • Fingerless Hands: Though much of the time we see the pony characters manipulating things with either their teeth, wings, or magic, or pushing or rolling objects with their hooves, there are a heck of a lot of times where their hooves function, for the most part, as hands in holding various objects despite the lack of fingers. Word of God has tried to have such cases avoided, but becomes necessary in cases of non-magical ponies talking and trying to gesture with a prop at the same time. Generally done for Rule of Cool or Rule of Funny. Also, not surprising given Faust's resumé.
    • Their backsides also seem to follow this: Applejack has been able to balance an entire bushel of apples on her hindquarters without a thought while walking, and many other ponies are seen carrying large items in a same fashion. Also see Prehensile Hair/Prehensile Tail below.
  • Fire-Breathing Diner: Twilight Sparkle suffered this after accidentally drinking some hot sauce. Even her tail and mane were on fire.
  • First Day of School Episode: A flashback in "Cutie Mark Chronicles" focuses on Twilight's first day at Celestia's school for gifted unicorns.
  • First-Name Basis: Pretty much anypony who refers to Twilight Sparkle simply calls her "Twilight". Interestingly, Princess Celestia is the only character to refer to her by her full name with any regularity.
    • Averted with Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash. The former can be either Pinkie or Pinkie Pie (and in one Full-Name Ultimatum, "Pinkamena Diane Pie"), while the latter can be called by first name, last name, or both, with equal familiarity.
  • Flanderization: This phenomenon has happened to some of the characters, mostly in Season 2.
    • In "Applebuck Season" and "Winter Wrap Up", Big Macintosh has actual dialogue. Since then, most of his lines have been "Eeyup" and "Nope", Although later episodes give him more varied lines, though he's still usually quiet.
    • Rarity, who goes from a generous and occasional melodramatic Large Ham to still being generous but much more melodramatic.
    • Rainbow Dash sits somewhere between this and Character Development: Season 2 developed Rainbow Dash into a Cool Big Sis for Fluttershy and gave her some more pronounced Smart Ball moments; while still playing up her narcissism, she is more rounded in Season 2 than in Season 1.
    • Fluttershy was initially meek (to the point of being somewhat aloof) and barely able to conjure up sentences to even her closest friends. Her later appearances, though more timid or cowardly, make her more cheerful and sociable. She was exaggerated in one area and rounded out in another. Her development was spelled-out several times in "Fluttershy Leans In".
    • Pinkie Pie suffers this as well, going from a character with a fondness for treats that would sometimes miss the point of situations, while still being dependable and determined to prove herself to being so consumed by the mere mention of frosting that she became lost in her own fantasy of it and needs Fluttershy to wipe the drool from her chin, not to mention going for coloring books while the rest of the cast are looking for a solution to a very real and immediate danger right outside the door.
    • Spike's love to work and his clumsiness reached the top in "Spike at Your Service".
  • Five Stages of Grief: "Tanks for the Memories" has Rainbow Dash experience these while dealing with her tortoise, Tank, having to hibernate for the upcoming winter. To summarize:
    • Denial: Rainbow not feeling happy at Tank having to hibernate and still wanting to spend her first winter with him.
    • Anger: Getting mad at her friends for constantly hearing the word "hibernate" over and over again, and even yells at them despite claiming she's not angry.
    • Bargaining: Trying to stop winter from coming soon by sabotaging the winter factory, which eventually fails.
    • Depression: Crying loudly after Fluttershy sternly says to her that she is unable to spend her first winter with Tanknote .
    • Acceptance: Agreeing to let Tank hibernate for her first winter with him, with Rainbow Dash reading a bedtime story to Tank.
  • Flash Forward: In the initial version of a recipes PDF on The Hub's website, the page for Cutie Mark Crusaders Chocolate Popcorn included Side-Story Bonus Art (originally fanart drawn by layout artist Kat Stenson long before becoming part of the show's crew) that depicted Apple Bloom, Scootaloo, and Sweetie Belle all grown up with cutie marks.
  • Flat Character: Diamond Tiara. Lampshaded; her cutie mark matches her crown. This also applies to her BFF Silver Spoon.
    • Averted in the case of Diamond Tiara after "Crusaders of the Lost Mark" explained that her scorn towards blank-flanks and general mean behaviour were instilled by her overly-demanding mother.
  • Fleur-de-lis: Celestia, Luna, and Nightmare Moon have this integrated into the "boots" they wear as part of their royal attire (Nightmare Moon even having it as part of the design of her collar). A unicorn mare seen in Canterlot with Fancy Pants in "Sweet And Elite" is even named this and has three of these symbols as her cutie mark. Princess Cadance has a crown in the shape of this symbol as well.
    • One of the many cutie marks Apple Bloom gets in "The Cutie Pox" is a fleur de lis which causes her to speak French.
  • Flight: In the My Little Pony franchise, the pegasi (winged ponies) and alicorns (winged unicorns) are the only ponies who can fly naturally. This doesn't exclude other kinds, though. In My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, There is a spell to give other kinds of ponies wings... but only for a limited time. And then you have Twilight Sparkle self levitating in the third Season. And then by the end of the season it became obsolete. Although, the flight lessons might not have taken, given her performance here.
  • Flintstone Theming: Whether a geographical location, an episode title, or a character name, it will invariably be based on either equine anatomy or function.
  • Floating in a Bubble:
    • In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 1", Spike is briefly trapped in a bubble by Discord, which pops after lifting him up for a bit. Rainbow Dash catches him before he hits the ground.
    • In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 2", when bargaining with Twilight for all the alicorn magic in Equestria, Tirek holds her friends — including Spike and Discord — suspended in individual bubbles.
  • Flower-Pot Drop: Every episode involving "Pinkie Sense" has used this:
    • In "Feeling Pinkie Keen", when the already horribly-injured Twilight Sparkle is assuring Spike that something is not going to fall, a flowerpot then crashes on her head. Then an anvil. Then a hay wagon. Then a grand piano. They all turned out to have fallen out from a delivery truck that Derpy Hooves was working at.
    • In "The Mysterious Mare-Do-Well", during The Reveal that Mare-Do-Well is some of the Mane 6 teaching Rainbow Dash a lesson, Pinkie Pie says she stopped the building collapse with her Pinkie Sense. She then detects a falling flowerpot with it, and dashes away to avoid it.
    • In "It's About Time", when Twilight asks the gypsy Pinkie Pie if she can use her Pinkie Sense to detect what will happen in the future, Pinkie explains that it's only for immediate emergencies. Cue flowerpot to Twilight's head.
      Pinkie: Like that. (pause) Where did that even come from?
      • Twilight then had to wear a white bandage over her head due to the injury for the rest of the episode. Which turned out to be the reason Future Twilight was wearing one.
  • Flying Car: Pegasus flight magic has been used for a variety of flying vehicles.
  • Flying on a Cloud: While they don't fly around on them, pegasi and other creatures with wings (e.g. griffons, birds) can do this. A spell exists for non-pegasi to do it too; it gets a lot of use in Fan Fiction.
  • Foil: Interestingly enough, each of the Mane Six acts as a foil to another one. The most obvious pair in this regard is Applejack and Rarity; their scenes together emphasize Applejack's more blunt and tomboyish side while highlighting Rarity's mildly obsessive-compulsive girly-girl nature. Similarly, Fluttershy's soft-spoken and gentle personality wrapped around an iron core amplifies Rainbow Dash's personality as a loud, brash, and reckless pony with a soft center. Twilight's straight-laced no-nonsense approach to most things and love of organization contrasts particularly with Pinkie Pie's free-wheeling and scatterbrained pursuit of fun, as well as Pinkie Pie's sometimes irrational behavior against Twilight's preference for logic. These contrasts are almost certainly intentional, and used to help advance a less overt aesop about friendship; the Mane Six can be such close friends and an effective team because of their differences, not in spite of them.
    • These are the more obvious pairings, but there are portions of each one's personality that serves to counter some part of the other in some way, shape, or form.
  • Food as Bribe: Twilight is faced with this several times throughout "The Ticket Master" by her friends in attempts to gain an extra ticket to the Grand Galloping Gala, but Twilight manages to turn away the bribes each time despite stating several times how hungry she is. Pinkie Pie also uses this against Spike in "Party of One" as part of her Perp Sweating sequence.
  • Forced Transformation:
    • A few times in the show. In a flashback, Twilight's Power Incontinence turns her parents into potted plants. In "Too Many Pinkie Pies", people keep interrupting her as she's practicing her Apples to Oranges spell, resulting in unfortunate orange/animal hybrids of a bird and a frog when her aim is thrown off.
    • In "Inspiration Manifestation", a party clown gets turned into a waiter and a mariachi pony gets turned into Octavia!
  • Foreshadowing:
    • As the camera follows Twilight Sparkle when she's dictating her letter to Celestia in the pilot episode (around 4:50 into the episode), the hourglass distorts everything behind it like you'd expect, but replaces the unicorn head sculpture outside with Nightmare Moon's head.
    • In the same episode, Rarity is choosing decorative ribbons. Upon selecting a particularly glittery one, she declares "Sparkle always does the trick!".
    • Also in the same episode, Twilight exclaims, "the fate of Equestria does not rest on me making friends." By the end of Episode 2, it's pretty clear that it does.
    • Listen closely to the music playing at Pinkie's surprise party in episode one. It's almost identical to the tune of her song in Episode 2.
    • When Nightmare Moon shows up at the festival, the Cutie Mark Crusaders are briefly shown cowering in fear next to each other, despite the fact that this episode was before "Call of the Cutie".
    • The camera also pans across each of Twilight's friends as she lists each of the Elements of Harmony as they correspond to each pony.
    • In "Call of the Cutie", Rainbow Dash tells Apple Bloom that she got her cutie mark after her first race. In "Sonic Rainboom", she says that she's only done a sonic rainboom once before, when she was "just a filly". These are, in fact, the same event, which is shown in detail in "The Cutie Mark Chronicles".
    • "The Show Stoppers" hinted what each of the Cutie Mark Crusaders' special talents are. Apple Bloom's is designing, Sweetie Belle's is singing/song-writing, and Scootaloo's is dancing.
    • In "Party of One", what happens at Gummy's birthday party is mostly Fauxshadowing, but one of Pinkie Pie's lines is true Foreshadowing.
      Pinkie: I can't tell you that, silly—then it wouldn't be a surprise!
    • In the first episode, Twilight proclaims that "all the ponies in this town are CRAZY!". By the time the first Season ended, all the mane characters had had a mental breakdown at least once.
    • In "Lesson Zero", Spike mentions that Twilight has a cape, and that he and Twilight dropped it off at the cleaners. In the next episode, "Luna Eclipsed", Twilight wears a cape as part of her Nightmare Night costume.
    • In "Party of One" during the infamous Pinkamena insanity scene, an odd rendition of Discord's theme can be heard briefly in the background.
    • In "Return of Harmony Part 1", after Rainbow Dash says that she'll always be loyal to the princess, Discord ominously says "We'll see about that...". He later gives her a Sadistic Choice and inverts her sense of loyalty.
      • In the same episode, when Discord is taunting Celestia about being imprisoned in stone, he is leaning on one of the pictures in a window, and then knocks on the forehead of the pony whose image he's leaning on. The pony in question is Fluttershy, the only one he had to magically touch instead of tempt to turn bad and the pony that would eventually reform him.
    • In "MMMystery on the Friendship Express", as Pinkie is describing each of the entries for the contest, you can tell who is going to eat which dessert by looking at whoever has the most craving expression as Pinkie is describing it.
    • When we first see the Elements of Harmony in their new forms in the second episode, Twilight's isn't a necklace like the other five, instead taking the form of a tiara (which she comments on in "The Return of Harmony, Part 2"). In "Magical Mystery Cure", when Twilight becomes an alicorn and a princess, the tiara changes shape slightly and becomes her crown.
    • In Part 1 of "A Canterlot Wedding" when we see Cadance in the present day, there is one visual hint that she's actually Queen Chrysalis in disguise: Her horn has a Sickly Green Glow, instead of the baby blue glow in Twilight's flashback.
    • One particularly clever bit of foreshadowing is also extremely subtle. Twilght's mane and tail are both cut in a style called "Hime Cut" and have been since day one. In Japanese, this literally means, "Princess Cut". What does she become at the end of Season 3 again?
    • A rather subtle bit of foreshadowing occurs in "Magical Mystery Cure", with Pinkie Pie's role being switched to running Sweet Apple Acres. The following season, we discover that she may be a distant relative of the Apple family.
    • Back from "Three's a Crowd", Discord, in full-on jester mode, gives Twilight a friendship medallion of little value. In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 2", Discord gives Twilight the medallion he got from Tirek, assuring her he fully means his friendship this time.
      • Before being sent to Tartarus with Luna and Cadance, Celestia weakly tells Tirek that he would not prevail. Her prediction would later come true when Twilight and her friends unlock their rainbow powers from the chest and send him back to Tartarus.
    • Multiple comments and actions by Princess Celestia hint at the end of Season 3, but the most prominent example is her brief conversation with Princess Luna at the beginning of the Season 3 opener, "The Crystal Empire", and her comments to Twilight a short time later about being "ready to move on to the next level".
    • Each of the Key episodes, where the Mane Six receive tokens of gratitude from some stranger whom they helped to learn a lesson about friendship, has subtle hints of the Mane Six's coat colors in the background. These colors are also seen when the Tree of Harmony destroys the vines from Discord's Plunder Seeds in "Princess Twilight Sparkle".
    • When the six-locked chest first appears, Celestia tells Twilight the whereabouts of the keys is a mystery she won't be solving alone. It's Discord who solves the mystery, bookmarking the entries with the lessons from the key episodes, allowing Twilight to pinpoint their connections.
    • In the Season 5 opener "The Cutie Map", all the unmarked ponies of the village have desaturated coat and mane/tail colors and equal sign cutie marks, and live in houses adjacent to each other in two rows. Starlight Glimmer is the only resident whose coat is not desaturated like the others, and lives in her own house dead center, hinting that she's not unmarked and her equal sign cutie mark is really makeup covering the real cutie mark underneath.
    • In Season 6's "A Hearth's Warming Tail", during the climax of Snowfall's Villain Song, ghostly Windigoes fly out of the cauldron and swirl through the air when she finishes the spell to destroy Hearth's Warming, hinting at the horrible consequences that follow if she succeeds.
    • Season 8 has several hints that Cozy Glow is not what she seems.
      • Her cutie mark is a chess piece (A rook, to be precise), showing she's a Chessmaster.
      • While meeting the CMC and when they offer to tutor her, she questions such and asks what's in it for them. The finale reveals she only seeks friendship for her own benefit.
      • During her tutor session, she initially guesses the Elements of Generosity and Magic as "Intelligence" and "Control", respectively. Then when she correctly guesses them, she sports a rather confident Slasher Smile.
      • Just before Cozy reveals to the CMC that she failed her test, her face displays a smirk for a single frame as she turns her head.
      • Cozy never takes a sip out of the "empathy cocoa" Starlight gives her, showing she has a Lack of Empathy as proven in the finale.
      • Cozy's line, "I guess I still have a lot to learn about friendship," turns out to be true as the finale reveals she only sees friendship as a source of power and doesn't even know what it really is.
      • In the beginning of "What Lies Beneath", when Twilight announces the upcoming test and all the students groan annoyed, Cozy can be seen smiling and clapping with excitement.
      • At the end of the same episode above, Cozy says "Just let Cozy take care of everything." as she looks into the floor grate where the Tree of Harmony is hidden, its glow casting an ominous light onto her face.
      • Chrysalis's brief appearance in the mid-season finale is rather prominent, as she shows what could come in the season finale itself. Chrysalis sees the Elements as a weapon, like how Cozy sees friendship as a source of power. Also, the Elements are used to thwart Chrysalis' revenge by destroying the Mean Six, and they do this again in the finale by protecting the Young Six from being sent to another dimension so they can thwart Cozy's plan to take over Equestria.
    • Season 9 has multiple hints that Grogar is Discord in disguise:
      • When Celestia and Luna decide to delay their retirement, Discord is annoyed and believes his anticipation for Twilight to become their successor is all for nothing. Also, note that Grogar first shows up right after the scene where the Princesses announce their retirement.
      • Discord somehow doesn't detect Tirek's presence at the Summer Sun Celebration, despite being his partner five seasons ago. He also nervously and politely denies himself when the ponies suspect he's the reason behind all the chaos.
      • Discord claims Twilight's Character Development is "boring", and seems to perk up once the preparations suddenly go downhill.
      • When Twilight is angry at her friends for not telling her when the Summer Sun Celebration went downhill, Discord spies on her, anticipating the inevitable, only to be annoyed when she quickly controls herself.
      • After the sun is raised, this line comes up.
        Discord: You know, it really does seem like you just might be ready for whatever comes next, Your Majesty.
      • The fact that Grogar leaves the lair and comes back in the end at exactly the same time no longer seems coincidental, since Grogar says he has to get "something" in a slightly meek tone, hinting he's really Discord who uses this as a lame excuse to check on Twilight in Canterlot and test her if she's ready to become the new ruler.
      • Note that Discord and Grogar share almost the same eye design and colors (red irises over yellow sclerae), and Grogar's brows are about the same as Discord's. It's more noticeable when the screen fades to black around them at the very end of part 2 of "The Beginning of the End".
  • Forgot About His Powers:
    • Apparently, in "Gauntlet of Fire", Twilight and Rarity never bother to use their magic to defend themselves after their disguise is revealed and Garble has them cornered.
    • Also in Part 1 of "The Beginning of the End", Twilight and Rarity don't remember to use their magic to catch the Elements from falling and breaking on the ground after King Sombra destroys the Tree of Harmony.
    • In the Grand Finale, the villain trio don't even bother to use Grogar's bell against Twilight when she's delivering her rousing speech, and projects a rainbow beam which defeats them and strips them of their powers.
  • Forgot I Could Fly: Rainbow Dash never forgets this, and is rarely seen walking on the ground. Fluttershy, however, is a mediocre flyer at best, and rarely flies if she doesn't have to, and on occasion, doesn't even remember she can. The other ponies occasionally forget that two of them (although, in practice, only one of them) can fly. In one instance, this trope is inverted, as Twilight Sparkle asks if she can help with weather duty, forgetting she needs to be able to fly to do that.
    • Applejack forgets that her friends can fly when she attempts a Train Escape in "The Last Roundup".
    • Twilight Sparkle spends half of the first couple of episodes teleporting every few seconds, but totally forgets she can do it when the hydra in "Feeling Pinkie Keen" is chasing her toward the rocks she ended up jumping on.
    • Twilight understandably does this a few times early after getting her wings, to the point Spike actually has to remind her that (something he regretted soon after).
  • Forgot Their Own Birthday: The entire plot of "Party of One" is caused by Pinkie forgetting about her own birthday (which was coincidentally one day after the birthday of her pet alligator Gummy). When her friends try to secretly prepare a birthday party for her, Pinkie mistakes their odd behavior as them not wanting to be friends with her anymore.
  • Forgot to Gag Him: Rarity is captured by creatures who want to use her gem-finding powers for their own purposes. She turns the tables by whining so obnoxiously through the whole thing that at one point they even agree to work for her just to get her to stop, and are desperate to get rid of her by the end.
  • Foul Flower: Parodied in an episode where an entity named Tantabus haunts everyponies' dreams. While the other five ponies' dreams involve cakes, dresses, books, apples, and giant bunnies, local Action Girl Rainbow Dash's has hers fighting changelings. When the Tantabus invades her dream, it changes into a Sugar Bowl filled with harmless singing flowers who somehow terrify her.
    We are such happy flowers
    We will sing for hours and hours,
    Aren't we unBEARABLY CUTE?
    Watch me play this solo flute
    [A flower plays flute as Rainbow Dash screams in horror]
  • The Four Chords of Pop: The theme song uses I-IV-vi-V.
  • Four-Fingered Hands: Hands, as an unavoidable consequence of having four-legged animals as the dominant species, are rarely seen, but whenever they appear they have four fingers — an example comes from "Too Many Pinkie Pies", when one of the Pinkie clones causes three stubby fingers and a thumb to sprout from its hoof. Justified in the case of the more humanoid dragons (Spike, the teenage dragons seen in "Dragon Quest") as they aren't human.
  • The Four Loves: The need of Phileo love is the main theme of this series; but the other three are addressed as well. Storge is referenced from time to time, often in combination with Phileo, and in particular with regard to Applejack and Rarity's family bonds. Agape is referred to as an emphasis to Phileo (eg. the Hearth's Warming Eve pageant). Even Eros has been referenced at times; most commonly with Shining Armor and Princess Cadance's wedding, though obviously only indirectly, such as with Princess Cadance's pregnancy, and with Spike's crush on Rarity.
  • Fourth-Wall Mail Slot: On March 9th, 2012, to promote that month's McDonald's toys, HappyMeal.com interviewed Pinkie Pie with ten questions submitted by fans.
  • Free-Range Children: The Cutie Mark Crusaders appear to have no constraints whatsoever, considering we see them doing things like practicing extreme sports deep in the forest or mountains with no supervision at all. Applejack never seems to worry about Apple Bloom unless the plot calls for it, and Rarity generally tends to get Sweetie Belle as far away from her as possible, due to Sweetie's tendency to cause havoc around her. Though we have seen their parents, they only appear in one episode for less than two minutes.
  • Freeze-Frame Bonus:
    • In the first episode, when Twilight is talking about Nightmare Moon and the Hourglass passes over the unicorn head statue in the background (at around the 4:50 mark), it changes to look like Nightmare Moon, going back when it is no longer behind the Hourglass.
    • In "Griffon the Brush Off", when Rainbow Dash and Gilda race to a cloud, each claims to have been first, but Pinkie Pie claims Rainbow Dash won by just a little bit. To the naked eye it looks like a draw, with both arriving in a flash at the same time, but freezing the image at the right time shows Pinkie is right.
    • In "Sonic Rainboom", when Twilight Sparkle casts the wing-making spell, an outline of Rarity with her butterfly wings appears for a couple of frames in the explosion of light, several minutes before we get to see the results of the spell properly.
    • "Stare Master": When her friends dismiss the broken table as "Who wants a hammer for a cutie mark?", Apple Bloom looks dreadfully upset.
      • Just before Sweetie Belle starts singing, Scootaloo and Apple Bloom cover their ears.
    • In "The Cutie Mark Chronicles", during Fluttershy's flashback, at the end of her song, if you watch the upper-left corner of the screen carefully, you can see Rainbow Dash just as she hits her first Sonic Rainboom. See here.
    • In "Party of One", during Pinkie Pie's Sanity Slippage, her normal Genki Girl look appears in place of her morose form in single frames.
    • In "Sisterhooves Social", Sweetie Belle runs a race with Applejack. At the very beginning Applejack gets completely covered in mud and they run the race together, it's only until the end when it's revealed that Rarity was really the one who ran the race. If you look back at "Applejack's" eyes you'll see that they're blue just like Rarity's (Applejack's eyes are green).
    • In "Sweet And Elite", during Rarity's "Becoming Popular" song, close examination of the "talking portraits" scene reveals cameos from Hoity Toity, Sapphire Shores, Photo Finish... and Derpy with a paper bag on her head.
    • "Secret of My Excess": The dog anatomy pictures in the Vet's room all have the outline of Winona, Applejack's dog.
      • When Spike recovers his normal size and Rarity says "You were the rampaging dragon?", Spike grins and strikes a "let me explain" pose for half a second before plummeting to the ground.
    • In "Baby Cakes", if you look closely during the opening, the babies in the nursery have the same or similar color schemes as other ponies, though most of them match more than one other pony (two that can be pinned down are the ones matching Rainbowshine and Medley).
    • And in "Ponyville Confidential", when Diamond Tiara shoves Dinky Hooves (Derpy's daughter in fanon) aside, Dinky gets Derpy's eyes for a moment.
    • In the episode "Pinkie Apple Pie", when Pinkie is about to plow into Applejack, if you look closely at the right side of the screen at about the 17 minute mark, you will see a faceless, white pony wearing a suit.
    • In "Maud Pie", when Maud saves Pinkie Pie, we finally get to see Maud's cutie mark for a split-second. note 
    • "Equestria Games": In the background crowd scenes, many past characters from the show can be vaguely seen, including Gilda, Sapphire Shores, aunt and uncle Orange, Gustave Le Grande, Ms. Peachbottom, Cheese Sandwich, Octavia, the Mad Men ponies, Silver Shill, and many many others.
      • In the stands near the royalty box is a pegasus mare with Bulk Biceps' body shape and the atypical beehive hairdo, butterfly glasses, and a string of pearls necklace. She has been dubbed "Mama Biceps".
    • "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 1": The necklace Tirek wears in the present is the same one Scorpan is shown wearing during their backstory.
      • Discord-as-a-pony's cutie mark resembles a cyclone or tornado. Appropriate for the spirit of chaos.
    • In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 2", the cucumber sandwiches Discord offers Fluttershy are cut into the shape of butterflies, or Fluttershy's cutie mark, which makes it even more insulting when he drops them on the ground in front of her.
    • Derpy Hooves' cameos are sometimes this, like in "May the Best Pet Win!", where she peeks out of Fluttershy's chicken coop near the end of the "Finding a Pet" song.
    • This promo from the Hub riffs on the "There's an App for That" ads from Apple. Every pony app shown has an appropriately punny name and a matching icon (e.g. Wikiponia, Hooftube, etc.), proper use of pony terminology for various app functions, and even the "PNN" news article with tiny text which flashes by at the end is fully coherent and readable. Someone at The Hub obviously knew that the Periphery Demographic would examine every frame for details like that, going so far as to give a Shout-Out to popular Pony Blog Equestria Daily.
  • Freudian Trio: Really more of a Freudian Sextet:
    • Twilight Sparkle: Intellectual, driven, conscientious, principled, and dutiful, but also obsessive-compulsive, and at least initially cold and impersonal. (Superego)
    • Rarity: Driven, ambitious, orderly, meticulous, and also can be obsessive-compulsive. (Also Superego)
    • Applejack: Responsible and sensible. (Ego)
    • Fluttershy: Also generally responsible, and tries to mediate conflict within the group, and in general. (Also Ego)
    • Rainbow Dash: Brash, arrogant, voluble, but also lazy and prone to selfishness. (Id)
    • Pinkie Pie: Chaos incarnate. (Also Id)
  • Friend to All Living Things: Fluttershy is a friend and support to all the critters of Ponyville and environs, and services as a combination caretaker, shelter, and veterinarian to the various animals.
  • Friendly Rivalry:
    • Applejack and Rainbow Dash are great friends, but that doesn't stop them from competing against one another.
    • Rainbow Dash apparently forms these kinds of friendships a lot, as evidenced by her interactions with Gilda and Lightning Dust.
    • This is the purpose of the "Equestria Games", which pit athletes from different parts of the kingdom against each other. Rainbow Dash and Spitfire lampshade this with an enthusiastic hoofbump at the finish line after the relay race.
  • Friendship-Hating Antagonist: To contrast the Main Six and The Power of Friendship they wield, many villains in the show despise, mock, misunderstand, or otherwise reject friendship and teamwork. This is most notable with the team-up of Chrysalis, Tirek, and Cozy Glow. Chrysalis and Tirek are both intent to win on their own, without getting help from the other two, while Cozy Glow stands out for understanding the innate power that friendship can offer you. The three eventually develop a strong sense of teamwork but continue to consider friendship a disease they must not succumb to. As a result, they're defeated not just by the Main Six, but by the entire population of Equestria, joining together in friendship.
  • The Friends Who Never Hang:
    • We rarely see Rarity and Rainbow Dash spend time together on-screen, let alone know what their relationship as friends are like. At most, they have a few snarky conversations and that's it. This is rather notable as this series mostly revolves around The Power of Friendship and True Companions.
      • There was in fact an episode revolved around Rarity wanting to be a good friend to Rainbow Dash, the plot barely required them to have a single conversation together.
    • Fluttershy and Applejack don't interact as much as well.
    • Interestingly, the first Season acted as something of a Deconstruction of this, since the six ponies were implied to be acquaintances before but only brought together due to their new-found friendship with Twilight Sparkle, thus leading to many of them being put into situations together and gaining new bonds (e.g. Applejack and Rarity in "Look Before You Sleep").
  • Friendship Song:
    • The Theme Song "Friendship is Magic", representing the themes of friendship in the show.
    • "B.B.B.F.F." (Big Brother Best Friend Forever) also does this to introduce the relationship between Twilight Sparkle and her brother Shining Armor.
    • "A True, True Friend", also, as one might expect.
  • Friendship-Straining Competition: "Fall Weather Friends" has Rainbow Dash and Applejack, both known for being competitive and stubborn, try to prove their respective dominance with several competitions. Rainbow wins most of them when she cheats with her wings, so Applejack challenges her to one more competition, a race during the annual "running of the leaves". This race brings out the worst in them, as they exchange trash talk, assume the other was cheating, and then end up cheating themselves. All of this makes them end up tying for... last place, with even the nonathletic Twilight placing ahead of them. They both admit they went too far and agree to not let their future competitions get in the way of their friendship again, ending the episode with another, much friendlier race around the track.
  • Fright Beside Them: A very unusual example in "Castle Mane-ia". While exploring a haunted castle, Rainbow Dash feels a hoof around her and assumes it is Applejack who got scared. However Applejack is actually standing far away. Rainbow Dash and Applejack become terrified as the hoof is coming out of the wall and run away. Then on the other side of the wall, Rarity had reached her hoof through and just got scared as she felt something alive on the other side. In this case the "Fright Beside Them" turns out to be another friend having the same experience in reverse.
  • Frothy Mugs of Water: Cider, a prized but limited-quantity beverage that ponies love. The series is full of winks and nudges that it's alcoholic, and it froths like beer to boot. Evidently the subtext isn't quite thin enough though; in some regions "cider" refers to the hard kind by default, so the beverage is changed to "juice".
    • "Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000" has ponies enthusiastically clinking their mugs, looking euphoric after drinking it, and Rainbow Dash eats dirt that had cider spilled on it because she's desperate for a taste.
    • In "The Break-Up Breakdown", a depressed Big Mac chugs cider upon thinking Sugar Bell broke up with him.
    • Berry Punch's card in the TCG has the quote "And one more for the road!" and the Apple Cider card itself says that ponies refer to cider as "liquid courage".
    • Larson had once pitched a prohibition-style script where Flim becomes the Mayor of Fillydelphia and banned cider, so Applejack becomes a bootlegger smuggling it into the city. Hasbro shot it down, presumably because any pretense of subtlety would have been lost forever after such a storyline.
  • Funny Background Event:
    • The first episode featured one of the guests at Pinkie's welcoming party for Twilight, a grey pegasus with gold eyes wearing a cross-eyed, vacant grin on her face. "Derpy Hooves" quickly became something of a sensation among the show's Periphery Demographic, enough that she made cameos in a few later episodes and by the next season was featured in a Funny Background Event Once per Episode.
    • A green unicorn named "Lyra Heartstrings" is fond of this. Quite often in crowd scenes she will be jumping up and down ecstatically with a grin on her face, and it's common for her to do out-of-place human actions like sitting upright. In one memorable scene, she was seen in a city in the clouds, bouncing up and down. Despite the fact that she was a unicorn, they did not give her wings to make her a pegasus. In "Magic Duel" she appears in the background during the climactic fight calmly drinking a soda, uninterested in the battle.
    • Gummy's antics with a ball of yarn in "Party of One".
    • In "Green Isn't Your Color", Pinkie Pie menacingly bites an apple while trying to scare Twilight out of telling Rarity's secret, only to really enjoy the apple and forget she was doing. During most of Twilight and Fluttershy's conversation following, Pinkie remains in the background still eating the apple.
    • In "Too Many Pinkie Pies", Pinkie Pie clones herself, and her duplicates can frequently be seen doing something silly in the background, like one who keeps on dancing during the barn-raising scene even as she narrowly avoids getting squashed by a falling barn wall.
    • Discord and Angel provide this trope in "Keep Calm and Flutter On" behind Fluttershy's back.
    • In "Trade Ya!", whenever the episode cuts to one of the B-Plots — Rarity and Applejack bickering over what to pool their resources to buy — Rainbow and Fluttershy can be seen passing in the background several times while on their Chain of Deals quest, carrying various items or struggling with the two-headed dog.
    • In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 1", when Discord dresses up in a big, silly alicorn horn, wings, and crown, the Mane Cast all give him funny glances... except for Fluttershy, who appears to be giggling to herself.
  • Furry Confusion:
    • Applejack has Winona, a sheepdog who behaves just like a regular (albeit well-trained) animal. In a later episode, we are introduced to the Diamond Dogs, anthropomorphic creatures that speak, walk on two legs, and wear clothing. To be fair, the Diamond Dogs are essentially canine-looking trolls with a Punny Name.
    • If horse-drawn carriages get brought up, expect a good dose of Lampshade Hanging, such as in "Over a Barrel" ("Okay, your turn to pull.""Aw, but we just switched!") and "The Best Night Ever" (Twilight enchants a few mice to turn into full-grown horses to pull their carriage, said mice run off... and Rarity solves the problem by simply asking her neighbors to pull). Basically, horse-drawn carriages are shown as the pony equivalent of rickshaws, even acting as a taxi service.
    • The animals Applejack and family herd hit this fairly often. Early on, we see her herding stampeding cows... who turn out to actually be a panicked mob she was running crowd control on (with a lasso and sheepdog). Later, we see her herding sheep into a pen... who then comment that she could have just asked.
    • As a standard rule, practically every animal appears to be sentient and sapient, although only a subset is shown to be capable of speech (mostly equines, bovines, and magical creatures); other animals, including other ungulates, are consistently depicted as regular if clever animals. Angel Bunny is intelligent, bad-mannered and capable of bossing around Fluttershy (admittedly not a difficult feat), Owloysious is a capable assistant librarian, and the animals in "May the Best Pet Win" are sufficiently self-aware to ignore their natural behaviors and try for the pet job.
  • Furry Fandom: The show often serves as a Closet Key for many in regards to this.
  • Furry Reminder: Lauren Faust wanted it to be clear that the ponies were ponies, not pony-shaped humans. This is mainly and most clearly done through careful integration of actions that actual horses do. Even the slight Anthropomorphic Shift of Season 2 doesn't stop the reminders from coming.
    • Regular references are made to the cast eating hay, oats, and flowers, as early as the third Episode with Twilight and Spike ordering hay fries and a daffodil and daisy sandwich at a cafe. Later episodes establish hayburgers exist as well. "Over a Barrel" has a saloon in Appleloosa called "The Salt Block"; horses lick salt as a source of nutrition and it helps keep them cool, which would be pretty handy in the prairies of Appleloosa.
    • Their physical reactions include laying their ears back to show unhappiness, and lowering their heads and pawing the earth to show anger and aggression. The latter is a plot point in "Bridle Gossip", as zebras do that to find water and the ponies, unfamiliar with zebras, see her as threatening. "Sonic Rainboom" even has Rainbow Dash flicking her tail when being taunted by another pegasus, which horses do when annoyed.
    • Neighs, snorts, whinnies, and other "horse" noises are common things to hear and are used when appropriate, such as snorting when they're annoyed. However, this one is Zig-Zagged since they rarely move their mouths when making these sounds. Given all the other authentic examples here, this is unlikely to be an oversight, and may be treated as sound effects rather than pieces of dialogue.
    • During Rarity's "Art of the Dress" song, she sings at one point about the parts of the body to be covered — and they're all horse parts. The lines include "Croup, dock, haunch/shoulders, hips" and "Making sure it fits forelock and crest/Don't forget some magic in the dress/Even though it rides high on the flank/Rainbow won't look like a tank." For bonus points, the patches of fabric she's cutting as she sings these lines are for the appropriate parts of the body.
    • At one point, Pinkie rolls around in the grass. You may think it's just her randomness, but real horses do that a lot. Pinkie also once scratches herself in a way ponies do but larger horses don't. Beyond remembering they're ponies and not people, the animators remember that they're just ponies and not other sorts of horse. Now that is attention to detail.
    • In "Baby Cakes", the Cake's foals are able to run around full-tilt at a month old. This is perfectly possible for real foals, since they can walk within a few hours of birth (and, in the wild, will be abandoned if they can't stand up within a few minutes). In that episode, the month old Pumpkin Cake is clearly teething. Guess when real ponies start to grow teeth. Yup, at about a month old.
    • While it's a little inconsistent and they are sometimes seen clapping hooves together instead, from "The Show Stoppers" onward, ponies are most commonly seen drumming hooves against the ground to signify applause.
    • Much of the tech in the series — at least, tech that doesn't fall into the schizo category — also serves as a furry reminder. Buttons for camera shutters and doorbells, for example, are large enough to easily be pressed with a hoof or muzzle, and their typewriters have only two hoof-sized keys and a space bar.
    • The dialogue in the series as well is fairly carefully written to make sure they don't say any "human" terms. They refer to each other as "everypony" and say things like "lend a hoof", and the entire series as a whole has only slipped up a couple of times.
    • Even when the ponies get scared, they’re often shown to react closer to the way equines do than humans. For example, whenever a pony sees something that makes them mildly wary or concerned, they tend to back up while keeping their eye on the thing that’s worrying them, much like real equines do (an instinct to prevent predators or snakes from being able to jump on their backs or bite at their hind legs). Whenever characters panic, you’ll notice most ponies tend to sprint away away from the danger as fast as possible; again, much like real equines. Even when Fluttershy gets so terror-struck that her legs (and wings) lock into place and she can’t move a muscle? You bet your hooves, some horses and ponies do that.
    • In "Swarm of the Century", Twilight Sparkle swats a parasprite away from her with her tail, much like how real horses and ponies do with flies.

    G 
  • Gag Dub: My Little Pony: The Brony Edition is back after a Copyright Snafu! You better get those episodes because, when Hasbro gets them, it's never coming back! Ponies mixed with the insanity of Samurai Pizza Cats, the wackiness of Animaniacs, the vulgarity of South Park, and all the 4th wall breaking/accurateness of Sgt. Frog. Condensed into 24 full-length 21-23 minute long episodes.
  • Geodesic Cast: We have the Mane Six, the Pillars of Equestria (also six ponies who are associated with various concepts and are purposefully paralleled with the Mane 6), and the Young Six (who get their own associations with the Elements of Harmony).
  • Gender Bender:
  • Genre Blind:
    • Twilight Sparkle, the main character, insists that "The future of Equestria does not rest on me making friends." Read the title again and take a guess how that pans out.
    • None of the Cutie Mark Crusaders, who are searching for their special talents, have realized that they live in a world which runs off Steven Ulysses Perhero. Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle have talents related to their names that they are mostly unaware of — riding a scooter and singing, respectively.note 
    • "Inspiration Manifestation": Spike apparently hasn't learned from the enchanted comic that was literally enchanted that something that sounds innocuous might be much more dangerous. Also, you would think that someone who has spent his whole life around a unicorn that specializes in magic and is an expert in spellbooks would know a tome of dark magic when he saw one.
  • Geographic Flexibility: Ponyville can gain features and buildings with no explanation or prior appearance should the plot require it. Equestria as a whole also qualifies, and although there is an official map, the map has the disclaimer: "Distance Not To Scale"; most likely not to constrain the development in later episodes.
    • This would make the above map more like the caricatured postcard maps of Real Life national/global landmarks, more than an one used for established travel.
  • Genre Shift: The series premiere was a High Fantasy Magical Girl story that just happened to star ponies. Once Nightmare Moon was defeated and the world was saved, the show instantly shifted to a Slice of Life ensemble comedy with An Aesop at the end of nearly every episode. While these make up the bulk of the series, the Magical Girl stories still return on occasion, usually in season premieres and finales. Note that this doesn't stop the Mane characters from being badass on frequent occasions, it just means the that thematic focus isn't on that part.
    • Sometimes individual episodes switch to another genre entirely, like Western or Mystery.
  • Gentle Giant:
    • Turns out both the manticore and the sea serpent in Episode 2 are friendly and easy-going beings.
    • Big Macintosh also qualifies for this, given his huge build, calm personality, and how he patiently puts up with Applejack's stubborn nature.
    • Celestia counts. She's bigger, and more powerful than most of the cast and is Large and in Charge.
  • Ghibli Hills: Surrounding Ponyville and Fluttershy's house.
  • Gift of Song:
    • In the Christmas Episode, "The Best Gift Ever", this is Spike's gift to Rarity after he stresses through the special over what to give her for Hearth's Warming Eve.
    • In "The Perfect Pear", Pear Butter performs a song (You're In My Head Like A Catchy Song) for her boyfriend, Bright Mac, as a gift for the anniversary of when they first met.
  • Giggling Villain: While Chrysalis can certainly pull off a full-blown Evil Laugh, she does tend to giggle creepily when amused.
  • Gilligan Cut: Done without a cut in "Call of the Cutie", when Apple Bloom declares that she won't go to Diamond Tiara's cuteceañera, which, thanks to the Rule of Perception, turns out to have already started Behind the Black. The show Justifies this by Apple Bloom forgetting Pinkie was hosting and she was already where the party was set to be held.
    • Used more conventionally to omit any explanation for how the Cutie Mark Crusaders ran into Twilight Sparkle in "The Cutie Mark Chronicles":
      Scootaloo: Come on, girls! We need action! We need Rainbow Dash!
      (cut)
      Twilight Sparkle: As a young filly in Canterlot, I always wanted to go to the Summer Sun Celebration...
  • Giving Up on Logic: The episode "Feeling Pinkie Keen" is all about Twilight Sparkle trying to find a logical reason how Pinkie Pie has the strange ability called "Pinkie Sense". By the end of the episode, Twilight Sparkle gives up, and learns that not all things need to be completely understood to be considered real or true.
  • Glowing Eyes of Doom:
    • Twilight Sparkle gets these when she uses some of her more powerful spells.
    • Princess Luna also gets these when angry.
    • The Mane Six whenever they break out the Elements of Harmony.
    • Whenever Rarity uses the magic found in the "Inspiration Manifestation" spellbook, her eyes glow a sickly green color and she becomes more and more obsessed with making everything pretty.
  • Goal in Life: Discovering your purpose in life creates your cutie mark on your flank. Given how permanent those things seem to be, one has to hope there's no pony equivalent to a mid-life crisis.
    • Well, considering that most of the Mane Six's breakdowns had something or other to do with their cutie marke.g. , it seems that the fan-named Cutie Mark Failure Insanity Syndrome is said equivalent.
    • The cutie mark just represents that particular pony's special talent, which often goes hand in hand with their chosen occupation. For example, Rainbow Dash's cutie mark signifies that her special talent is high-speed flying. She definitely enjoys it, and made a career out of it by joining the Wonderbolts, but she's also shown great skill in weather control (clearing the sky in ten seconds flat, etc.). Another good example is Pinkie Pie. Her special talent, as shown by her three-balloons cutie mark is organizing parties. However, she's also an excellent ice skater and is able to play several instruments at once, which don't have any direct relation to parties.
  • Good Eyes, Evil Eyes: The show tends to give the good characters the standard big watery eyes while villains tend to get scary (and mostly serpentine) peepers. Even minor "villains" like Trixie and Gilda tend to have less reflections in their eyes. Spike (except for one episode) averts this, as does Discord after his Heel–Face Turn.
    • In "Inspiration Manifestation", when Rarity is succumbing to the influence of the spell, her eyes glow freakish green, and the usually enormous irises shrink. When Spike is showering her with kind words of praise and support, her eyes return to their normal limpid pools of blue.
  • The Good Guys Always Win: As to be expected from an idealistic child-friendly TV-Y show like this, No matter how dire the situation, or how powerful, threatening or seemingly unstoppable or infallible the villains become, the heroes will always prevail. Always. No Pyrrhic Victory or cost, either. So you basically know how the whole situation is going to end ahead of time. However, the show still manages to keep up the interest anyway by offering storytelling twists in other ways, proving that this is not necessarily a bad thing.
  • Good Parents: Twilight Sparkle's parents and Rarity's parents.
  • Good Princess, Evil Queen: The only character bearing the title "Queen" is Queen Chrysalis, the villainous leader of the Changelings, a race of shapeshifting emotion-eaters. Every other female monarch (Celestia, Luna, Cadance, Twilight Sparkle) bears the title "Princess". This was an Enforced Trope, as Celestia was a queen when the show was being planned, but Hasbro asked the creator to make her a princess because children viewed princesses as good and queens as evil.
  • Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Naturally, this show cannot have cursing, and even "heck" is used sparingly. Instead there are numerous substitute phrases using horse puns, such as "what the hay was that?", "oh ponyfeathers", and "for pony's sake". The most transparent of these is provided by Fluttershy in "Putting Your Hoof Down", who snaps "Nopony gives a flying feather!". Season 6 has Fluttershy use "peeved", and the other characters react as if she said a curse, including her mumbling "Excuse my language."
  • Gonna Fly Now Montage: An almost literal one for Fluttershy in "Hurricane Fluttershy", where she trains herself to be a stronger flyer (with her animal friends acting as motivational trainers).
  • Go-to-Sleep Ending: At the end of "Too Many Pinkie Pies", the Mane 6 ask what Pinkie Pie wants to do after the whole duplicating mess. Pinkie Pie decided right then and there to just lay down and go to sleep. The others then quietly leave.
  • Go, Ye Heroes, Go and Die: Fluttershy to Rainbow Dash in "Sonic Rainboom":
    Fluttershy: But Rainbow Dash, just because you failed the Sonic Rainboom a hundred thousand times in practice doesn't mean you won't be able to do it in front of an entire stadium full of impatient, super-critical sports fan ponies!
    • Played With in "Green Isn't Your Color". Photo Finish really wasn't trying to be reassuring.
      Photo Finish: Nervous? Don't be ridiculous. You're only facing a large crowd of ponies who will be watching your every moves and silently judging you.
    • Also see the entry for Ironic Echo.
    • Photo Finish saying that didn't affect Fluttershy very much, but Pinkie Pie's attempts at encouragement reducing Fluttershy to tearful hysterics becomes a Running Gag in "Filli Vanilli".
  • God Save Us from the Queen!: The Big Bad of the Season 2 finale is Chrysalis, queen of the Changelings.
    • Nightmare Moon is implied to play to this trope in the Season 1 premiere.
    • This trope was intentionally averted by making Equestria a principality.
    • Cozy Glow crowns herself the "Empress of Friendship" once she gets rid of Twilight.
  • Golden Moment: The first four seasons' episodes all ended with one of the main cast narrating a summation of the episode's moral. This was dropped by the start of Season 5, as even the writers were growing tired of having to stop an episode to explain the lesson that most anyone with a brain would already have picked up on.
  • Grand Finale: The series ended with an overreaching three-part finale consisting of the two-parter "The Ending of the End", followed by "The Last Problem".
  • Grail in the Garbage: In "The Return of Harmony, Part 2", Twilight, under the influence of Discord, literally throws the Element of Magic in the trash.
  • Green Gators: Crocodilians, including regular crocodiles, Pinkie's baby alligator Gummy, and monstrous creatures such as the Cipactli and cragadiles, are all various shades of green. This discrepancy is especially obvious in a gag in "Pinkie Pride" when a scene cuts to Gummy as a real baby alligator in live-action, whose hide is a much duller hue than the animated Gummy's bright emerald green.
  • Green Rooming: Princess Luna and Zecora both got entire episodes dedicated to introducing each early on in Season 1, but neither really got any further screentime until Season 2 (barring one quick scene for Zecora in the episode immediately after her introduction).
  • Gross-Up Close-Up: A few relatively tame ones.
  • Growling Gut: A trope that seems to occur frequently in this series (at least compared to the other My Little Pony series). The most notable occurances are:
  • Guide Dang It!: The magical map in Princess Twilight's castle, introduced in Season 5, only says which members of the Mane 6 need to go on a mission and where they should go. It doesn't tell them what the problem is or how to solve it — figuring these out comprises much of the action in episodes involving map missions. The writing staff may have decided that it's better for the characters to receive quests from a magical artifact instead of Princess Celestia as they had before, since if Celestia gave them information about the quest it would be too easy for them, and if she withheld the information it would only perpetuate her reputation as a troll.
  • Guilt-Induced Nightmare:
    • Exaggerated and invoked during "Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep?". To keep punishing herself for her actions as Nightmare Moon, Luna created the Tantabus to torture her in her dreams. This meant that each night she had continuous nightmares, not just because of her guilt but as a way of keeping herself reminded of her guilt.
    • In "For Whom the Sweetie Belle Toils", this is invoked. Sweetie Belle is furious with Rarity for unintentionally upstaging her, so she ruins a headdress that Rarity has made. Luna gives her a nightmare that reveals a Bad Future; if the headdress remains unfixed, Rarity will be an outcast among the fashion community and her sanity will shatter. Upon waking up, Sweetie Belle, Apple Bloom, and Scootaloo hurry to Canterlot to save the headdress.

    H 
  • Hair-Raising Hare: The bunny stampede from "Applebuck Season". More specifically, a herd of baby bunnies runs off and stampedes through Ponyville, causing the locals to panic. One pony even faints in the midst of it, though the bunnies simply run around her.
  • Half-Baked Niceness: Happens several times:
    • "Suited For Success": Rarity makes dresses for the rest of her friends, but they don't like them as much as she'd hoped. They try to think of a compliment, but all they can come up with is that the dresses are "something" while Fluttershy goes "It's... nice". Rarity quickly notices something isn't right, and the others keep trying to be nice - until Rainbow Dash bluntly says her dress isn't as cool as she imagined.
    • "Lesson Zero": Twilight tries to give a doll to the Cutie Mark Crusaders, but said doll is clearly in very bad shape. The three girls attempt to think of something nice, only to merely call the doll "great" while Sweetie Belle says she likes her mane in a very confused tone.
    • "A Canterlot Wedding": Queen Chrysalis, masquerading as Princess Cadance, tries Applejack's treats. She doesn't like them, but says that she "love-love-loves" them to appear polite. Applejack gladly gives her more treats, while Twilight simply stares completely unimpressed.
    • "Ending Of The End": Cozy Glow tells Chrysalis and Tirek to say something nice to each other. They don't want to, but try to do it anyway; Chrysalis says Tirek is red, while Tirek says Chrysalis is "not as annoying as [he] expected". Despite the compliments being very low-effort, Cozy Glow accepts it and continues discussing Grogar's bell.
  • Half-Dressed Cartoon Animal: Specifically the male ponies; most of them wear vests. As stated elsewhere, female ponies generally just wear some form of accessory.
  • Hammerspace: The show frequently features the use of hammerspace by ponies, but mostly in small ways. Pinkie Pie, however, very frequently produces things out of Hammerspace, though Rarity has a slight tendency towards it, especially with her drama couch (for her to fall on; pulled on from just offscreen) in "Lesson Zero". Spike occasionally digs around in his pockets for some items, even though he doesn't wear clothes.
    • In "Equestria Games", after melting the ice cloud, Spike pulls an umbrella out of nowhere.
  • Hammy Villain, Serious Hero: Upon his debut, Discord is a Large Ham Spirit of Chaos, bent on spreading chaos all over the land and causing, well, discord towards mission-driven Twilight Sparkle and her friends.
  • Handmade Is Better: Zigzagged in "The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000". The central conflict of the episode is a contest between the Apple family, who hand-make (or, well, hoof-make) their apple cider by a careful and laborious artisanal process, and the Flim-Flam brothers, who mass-produce large quantities of it using a complex machine. The twist is that the brothers' product is in fact really good — it only turns into an undrinkable mess once they turn off the quality control in order to ramp up production.
  • Hand-or-Object Underwear: Yes—even though they're ponies and don't normally wear clothes, this trope gets used for the odd gag:
    • An episode revolving around small-but-cute flying pests called Parasprites had a gag that was a send-up to this trope: they were snuggling next to Rainbow Dash against her will, and she wanted them off her. They still try to snuggle at her, shaping themselves into a few different configurations, one of which looked like a bikini covering her censorable bits (even though a pony's mammaries aren't by their forelegs).
    • In one episode Rainbow Dash pulls Fluttershy's sheets off to get her out of bed, she gasps and covers her chest even though they usually don't wear clothes (spoiler: they're ponies!), Rainbow Dash gives her an annoyed look and Fluttershy grins sheepishly.
    • Another episode has Discord using a vacuum to suck Rarity's goo-covered Gala dress off of her, causing her to rear up and cover her chest and crotch while slinking away in embarrassment.
  • Handy Mouth: Ponies that aren't using their magic or hooves to carry or manipulate things sometimes utilize their jaws — the series gets somewhat schizophrenic about this issue.
  • Hard Light: Rainbows are a liquid. It's safely edible, but painfully spicy. It's also sticky enough to be used as war paint.
  • Hated Item Makeover:
    • In "Sisterhooves Social", Sweetie Belle cleans Rarity's messy room, but all this does is piss her off, as she prefers it to be disorganized so that it can give her inspiration for her dresses.
    • Downplayed in "Castle Sweet Castle". Twilight's castle, magically created from the remnants of her former home in the Golden Oak Library after it was destroyed by Tirek, is so cold and intimidating to Twilight that she avoids spending time there at first. Her friends almost make this worse by trying to redecorate based on their own preferences rather than Twilight's, but subvert this by scrapping their plans and creating a chandelier of memories from the Golden Oak Library to make it feel more like home.
  • Hate Sink: Prince Blueblood, Diamond Tiara (at first), and Svengallop are but some examples.
  • Heart Is an Awesome Power:
    • Amongst the unique abilities ponies possess, Fluttershy being the Friend to All Living Things is highly useful when nature needs to managed, but doesn't seem that impressive. Except her ability really does include all living things, including a manticore, a gigantic adult dragon, a cockatrice, Cerberus, and even the spirit of chaos himself, all of whom she managed to pacify with nothing but a firm tone and a kind touch (with occasional help from The Stare). Good thing she's the nice, shy little pegasus she is...
    • Earth ponies don't have any obvious magic, unlike the unicorns, who cast spells from their horns, and the pegasi, who walk on clouds, control weather, and have tactile telekinesis that allows them to tow things while in flight. According to Word of God, they're stronger and have more endurance than a unicorn or pegasus of comparable physique, and have a deeper connection with naturenote and the earth. The latter means that they are inherently better at growing and tending plants of any kind, to the point where in ancient times earth ponies were the only pony tribe capable of producing food, and even in modern times only earth ponies have ever been seen growing anything. The greater strength of earth ponies is seen most notably in "Hearts and Hooves Day", where an earth pony schoolteacher is strong enough to break through two walls when properly motivated (and without Impact Silhouette, she just demolishes it), while one who is notably stronger than average is shown effortlessly towing a house. While skipping.
    • Pinkie Pie's special ability is making other ponies happy. While this mostly manifests in throwing sweet parties and being a delightful Cloudcuckoolander, this also gives her access to the Rule of Funny, allowing her to regularly perform feats that break the magical rules of Equestria, most forms of logic, and the fourth wall, interrupting the Iris Out on three separate occasions.
      • Pinkie's "party cannon" helps her set up parties super fast. As the changeling fight showed, it can also be used as an actual cannon.
    • A literal example with Princess Cadance, the third alicorn in the series. She's a Love Goddess who has the power to repair the bonds between ponies and spread love wherever she goes. Compared to the Physical Goddess level abilities her aunts show, this doesn't seem as impressive. Then you remember that The Power of Friendship is the most powerful magic in the world, and The Power of Love is its close cousin. Cue her and her husband-to-be using The Power of Love to deliver a Heart Beat-Down to Queen Chrysalis that sends her and her minions hurtling over the horizon. We see in the Season 3 opener that her love magic is capable of repelling King Sombra, an ancient and extremely powerful unicorn king who took both her super-powered aunts to defeat a thousand years ago.
    • In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 2", The Elements of Harmony, in their Rainbow Power form, are more powerful than the magic Tirek absorbed from countless ponies across Equestria, including that of the four alicorn Princesses and the personification of Chaos.
  • Heart of the Matter: The Crystal Empire protected by the powerful Crystal Heart which serves to focus the population's collective spirit to protect the Empire from evil forces.
  • The Hecate Sisters: The three alicorns in Season 2: Cadance is the Maiden, Celestia is the Mother, and Luna is the Crone (despite being younger than Celestia, thanks to her role and personality).
  • Heel–Face Turn: Redemption is a recurring theme in the series, starting at the very beginning with Nightmare Moon's transformation back into Princess Luna. Other reformed antagonists include Discord, Gilda, Trixie, Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon, and Starlight Glimmer.
  • Hell Is That Noise:
  • Helping Granny Cross the Street: Rainbow Dash feels outshined by Mare-Do-Well, and unable to find anyone in need of rescuing, obstinately insists on "helping" Granny Smith cross the street even though she didn't want to cross it at all.
  • Here There Be Dragons: Hasbro's official map of Equestria states, "Dragons be here." Justified by the existence of actual dragons in Equestria.
  • Heroic BSoD: Almost Once per Episode. All of the mane ponies get one in the first Season, ranging from mild nervous breakdowns to freaky psychoses, and Fluttershy and Twilight Sparkle continue to get more in the second. Each time, the reasons are intimately related to the character's personality, strengths and weaknesses. See specific episodes or the relevant Heroic BSOD example page for more details; appears in "Applebuck Season" (Applejack), "Swarm of the Century" (Twilight), "Suited for Success" (Rarity), "Sonic Rainboom" (Rainbow Dash), "Party of One" (Pinkie Pie), and "The Best Night Ever" (Fluttershy); and "The Return of Harmony" (Twilight), "Lesson Zero" (Twilight), "Putting Your Hoof Down" (Fluttershy), "Hurricane Fluttershy" (Fluttershy) and "A Canterlot Wedding" (Twilight).
  • Heroic Self-Deprecation:
    • Nearly saves Fluttershy from corruption in the Season 2 premiere. Discord starts mocking her about how weak and useless she is, expecting her to get riled up and protest about how her kindness has done so much good... but instead, her self-esteem is so crappy she "agrees" with him wholeheartedly, and starts talking about how grateful she is to have friends who are willing to help her so much because she's good for so little, despite the fact that this is the pony who walked up to a raging manticore, made a dragon cry, and stared down a cockatrice that was turning her to stone at the time, among other things in Season 1 alone. Just when it looks like she's off the hook, Discord loses his patience and corrupts her by sheer brute force.
    • Twilight Sparkle also has shades of this, particularly in "Boast Busters"; she's afraid of defeating a Small Name, Big Ego character in a magical contest simply because she doesn't want others to think she's showing off. This later comes into effect in "Lesson Zero", where Twilight begins mentally unhinging because she hasn't sent in her weekly friendship report and fears getting sent back to magic kindergarten, or possibly to the moon. Never mind all her positive findings before then.
    • Spike's reaction to praise from the Mane Six and Princess Cadance for saving everypony from the iceberg cloud in "Equestria Games".
    Spike: I just saw what needed to be done and reacted. Just so happens I can breathe fire, and if any of you could do that, you'd have done the same.
  • Heroism Won't Pay the Bills: Despite the Mane Six saving Equestria, Applejack still has to find ways to raise money to keep her farm (as shown in the episode "The Best Night Ever").
  • Hero of Another Story:
    • Daring Do is this when she's discovered to be real.
    • In "Inspiration Manifestation", Twilight goes through a lot of offscreen trouble to clean up Rarity's mess. She eventually had to call in backup from Luna and Cadance, and it's made clear that the whole ordeal caused a great amount of stress.
  • Hetero Sexual Life Partners: Pretty much the entire Mane Six.
  • The Hero's Journey: The first two episodes of Season 1 qualify as this for Twilight Sparkle.
  • Hidden Object Game: Discover the Difference, Encuentra los Símbolos, and the Hidden Picture and Spot the Difference activities in the iOS Games Twilight Sparkle: Teacher for a Day and Ruckus Reader.
  • Hilarity Ensues: On a fairly regular basis.
  • His Own Worst Enemy: Princess Luna's worst enemy was herself. While the Mane Cast and her own sister had to stop her as Nightmare Moon, her suffering and even her banishment were of her own doing, mainly for her inability to deal with her jealousy and her loneliness.
  • Hobbits: Of the pony breeds, Earth ponies seem to fit this mold best. They also don't have overt magic or flight, making them a little more relatable to the audience.
  • Holding Back the Phlebotinum:
  • Hold Your Hippogriffs: Too many examples to list. Spread all over this article — there's a pony theme going on.
    • Horse-related puns galore!
    • (Usually) replacing "body" with "pony", such as "everypony" and "somepony".
    • Longer phrases like "on the other hoof" and "stand back you foals."
    • Oddly averted with "look a gift horse in the mouth", "hungry as a horse", etc.
    • What Twilight says to Applejack in "Applebuck Season" also counts as a Last-Second Word Swap to viewers.
      Twilight Sparkle: AJ, I think you're beating a dead... (camera zooms out to reveal Applejack's been trying to buck apples off a dead tree) ...tree.
    • Played With during an aversion in the same episode:
      Twilight Sparkle: Ugh. That pony is as stubborn as a mule. (Turns and sees a mule next to her) No offense...
      Mule: None taken.
  • Hollywood Board Games:
  • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic:
    • "Dragonshy": Pinky Pie might be scatterbrained and the ultimate Genki Girl but also displays moments of brilliance, such as when she beats Rarity at Tic-Tac-Toe 35 times in a row. Rarity, who can be quite stubborn, keeps challenging her for rematches.
    • "Read It and Weep": A bedridden Rainbow Dash gets enraptured by an adventure book despite her initial reluctance. This initially embarrasses her, so when her friends bring her a Battleship knock-off (with a pony and a cumulus for ships) to play, all Rainbow wants is to finish quickly the game and resume reading her book. Her friends are flabbergasted by this behavior because not only Dash is acting suspiciously but they thought they'd have better luck at cheering Rainbow up with a board game. Under normal circumstances, Twilight and Fluttershy would have been right.
      Rainbow Dash: Aw, shucks! You rained on my cumulus!
  • Hollywood Density:
  • Honest Advisor:
  • Honesty Aesop:
    • Applejack is the element of honesty, and several episodes, notably "Leap of Faith", revolve around her honesty being put to the test.
    • In "The Cutie Pox", Apple Bloom comes down with the titular disease, and the only cure is a flower grown from the "seeds of truth", which can only grow when someone tells the truth to it. This causes Apple Bloom much conflict, because this means that she will have to confess that she got the disease by sneaking into Zecora's house and brewing a potion in a dishonest attempt to get a cutie mark.
    • In "Where the Apple Lies", Apple Bloom accidentally mixes up cider with zap apple jam, and tries to lie so she can fix it herself. Applejack, Granny Smith and Big Macintosh then tell her about how a younger Applejack almost ruined the family business with her lies. The whole situation had taught Applejack that lies only pile on each other and make things worse.
  • Horde of Alien Locusts: The Parasprites.
  • Hotblooded: Rainbow Dash and, to a lesser extent, Applejack.
  • How Do I Shot Web?:
    • The Season 4 premiere starts out with Twilight Sparkle learning how to fly with her new wings with mixed results. Later in the two-parter, she is able to fly from one city to another with Spike as a passenger but not without him kissing the ground afterwards.
    • In "Power Ponies", the cast gets sucked into a superhero comic and receive super powers. When they first confront the villain they utterly fail to use their powers effectively. Over the course of their episode they learn to get it together.
    • In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 2", Twilight has to raise the sun and lower the moon now that she has Celestia's and Luna's magic. It's a bit shakey, but she manages.
  • Humanlike Animal Aging: Zig-Zagged. Ponies seem to live as long as humans. On the other hand, baby ponies seem to develop very quickly, like real horses. Also, though it's debated to what extent it was intended to imply this, the very elderly Granny Smith was present for the founding of Ponyville, and that was later established to have happened quite some time ago. If taken at face value, Granny's been in the triple digits longer than most of the cast has been alive, with other generations having come and gone, suggesting that, rarely, some ponies can live a great deal longer than is normally possible. The comic character Professor Inkwell is a similar case: looks very old now; looked younger when some adult ponies were children... and looked just as young for events that should be well before her time even then, but it's unclear if it's Writers Cannot Do Math at work.
  • Humanlike Foot Anatomy: While the pony characters appear to walk on actual hooves, they can pick up and hold things they shouldn't be able to. They also seem to have "elbows" in their forelegs for gesturing purposes.
  • Humiliation Conga:
    • Gilda, in "Griffon the Brush Off", goes to one of Pinkie Pie's parties and is hit with prank after prank.
    • What happens to poor Twilight when she tries to help Fluttershy wake the animals in "Winter Wrap Up".
    • Twilight again in "Feeling Pinkie Keen", throughout pretty much the whole episode.
    • Almost the entire cast gets pounded with this trope in "The Best Night Ever".
  • Hurricane of Puns: In several episodes.
    • "The Cutie Pox" has Twilight discovering pony illnesses in a book: Hay fever, and The Trots.
    • The Theme Tune Extended (which can be found as a sing-along on the DVD The Friendship Express) includes puns on each of the Mane Six's names sans Twilight.
  • Hybrid-Overkill Avoidance: If two ponies of different types have children, the children will be one or the other instead of a cross. Ponies of mixed ancestry can produce children of other types, for instance two Earth ponies had one unicorn and one Pegasus foal. Alicorns (with the traits of all three) are made, not born, with one known exception.
  • Hypocrite:
    • Most of the Mane Six are this in the episode "The Mysterious Mare-Do-Well". Sure, they weren't happy with Rainbow Dash getting a bit of a big head over getting praised for saving lives, but they were doing it just to spite somepony. And they bragged even more about it just to make her feel worse. Well, With Friends Like These...
    • Then there's "Ponyville Confidential". The citizens of Ponyville enjoyed reading about the gossip that was spread about each others, but when they were gossiped about, they got angry.
    • In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 2", despite continually showing bitterness and hate for his brother Scorpan betraying him to save Equestria, Tirek has no qualms about stabbing Discord in the back for power.
  • Hypocritical Humor:
    • In "Green Isn't Your Color", Spike gets mad at Twilight for telling someone about his crush on Rarity... while he's wearing a fanboyish t-shirt with her picture on, making his crush pretty darn obvious.
    • In "Over a Barrel":
    Rarity: You talk about it [AJ's tree, Bloomberg] as if it's your baby or something.
    Applejack: Who're you calling a baby?! Bloomberg's no baby! (Nuzzles her tree) Don't let widdle Warity make you all saddy-waddy! Bloomberg's a big and strong apple tree. Yes he is!
    • In "Lesson Zero", Rarity calls Twilight a "drama queen" when she finds out Twilight is worried about not sending her friendship report to Princess Celestia on time... while lying on a fainting couch Rarity had magically summoned because she forgot the plates for a picnic.
    • In "May The Best Pet Win", Rainbow Dash tells the tortoise competing to be her pet "This isn't a game, you know!". She immediately tells the rest of the prospective pets "These games will determine which one of you has the most important qualities I'm looking for in a pet."
    • A somewhat more meta example occurs in the episode "It's About Time", when Twilight Sparkle is visited by herself from the future, she declares that such a thing is not scientifically possible. Twilight, of course, is a magical purple unicorn.
    • In "Castle Mane-ia", Spike gets told that sarcasm is unfunny. This is coming from Twilight Sparkle.
    • In "Rarity Takes Manehattan", Rainbow Dash mentions that she hates musicals, because the ponies are always starting musical numbers at the drop of a hat. Cue musical number.
    • In "Twilight’s Kingdom, Part 1", Rainbow Dash points out that Spike had bragged during the train ride about how he'd saved the Crystal Empire the last time they were there. Rarity reminds Rainbow Dash that she's fond of boasting about her own exploits.

    I 
  • I Am a Monster:
    • Fluttershy in "Putting Your Hoof Down" after making Pinkie Pie and Rarity cry.
    • Thorax refers to himself as “the evil changeling” in “The Times They Are A Changeling.” He also is implied to dislike his natural changeling appearance, as he said nopony could trust someone who looks like it.
  • "I Am" Song:
  • I Ate WHAT?!:
    • In Part 1 of the series opener, Twilight Sparkle pours herself (and drinks from) a glass of what turns out to be hot sauce.
    • "Applebuck Season" has an exhausted and sleep-deprived Applejack mishearing Pinkie Pie's muffin recipe instructions and making muffins with potato chips, soda, lemon juice and "wheat worms" ("That must be fancy talk for earthworms!"). Cut to the local health clinic, which is overloaded with victims of food poisoning.
    Nurse: There was a mishap with some of the baked goods.
    Pinkie Pie: No, not baked goods... baked bads! *barf*
  • I Believe I Can Fly: In addition to the numerous pegasus and alicorn ponies, pre-alicorn Twilight can briefly levitate with her unicorn magic. In "Sonic Rainboom", Rarity is temporarily granted magic butterfly wings, which get burned off when she flies too close to the sun. Come the Season 5 finale, we see Starlight Glimmer performing straight-up magic flight without wings.
  • Idiosyncratic Wipes: During the Title Sequence, each of Twilight Sparkle's friends in the Mane Six gets one, related to their specialities (and cutie marks): a dashing rainbow for Rainbow Dash, a party balloon inflating to cover all the screen for Pinkie Pie, a growing eye twinkle for Rarity, a shower of apples for Applejack, and a swarm of butterflies for Fluttershy.
  • I Just Want to Be Badass: Rainbow Dash and Scootaloo suffer from this. Spike also heads into this a few times, when his status as a less-than-ferocious dragon is pointed out, but he's usually secure in his masculinity.
  • I Just Want to Be Special: The Cutie Mark Crusaders (Apple Bloom, Scootaloo, and Sweetie Belle) want desperately to learn their special talents so they can earn their Cutie Marks and no longer be "Blank Flanks".
  • Imagine Spot:
  • Imperfect Ritual: Happens twice. In the pilot two-part episode, the Elements of Harmony needed to defeat Nightmare Moon are destroyed, but Twilight Sparkle realizes she can use her friends as substitutes for the elements due to them embodying their traits, and this works. In the second season opening, Twilight later tries to use the Elements of Harmony as embodied in her and her friends to defeat Discord, but Rainbow Dash is missing so she substitutes Spike. This time, it doesn't work.
  • Importation Expansion: The Japanese dub has a short segment after the show called "Little Pony TV".
  • Impossible Pickle Jar: Rainbow Dash open a jar of pickles as one of her "heroic" stunts as she is getting desperate for "heroic" things to do.
  • Improbably Female Cast: With a few exceptions, almost all recurring characters are female.
    • Even the extras are predominantly female.
    • The show has passed the inverse The Bechdel Test (two male characters who speak about something other than a female character) in four episodes, once with Snips and Snails have an argument about getting stuck with bubble gum, another where Donut Joe and Gustav were arguing about whose dessert was best, once when Discord tells Spike his new role is a big deal and a fairly long scene in the Season 4 finale where Discord has a conversation with Lord Tirek.
  • Inconsistent Dub:
    • In the French dub:
      • Ponyville keeps alternating between keeping its original name, or being literally translated to Poneyville. Sometime, the names alternate in the same episode.
      • The Elements of Harmony are either called "Éléments d'Harmonie", which is a literal translation, or "Éléments d'Équilibre", which means "Elements of Balance". Sometime, the names alternate in the same episode.
      • The Everfree Forest was originally changed to "la Forêt Désenchantée" (the Un-enchanted Forest), but starting from the middle of the season 2, they decided to keep the original "Everfree" name.
      • Owlowiscious is meant to keep his original name, but in "May the Best Pet Win!", he's called "Chouette délicieuse", meaning "Delicious owl". Doubles as a "Blind Idiot" Translation because Owlowiscious's name is meant to be a mix between "owl" and "Aloysius", not "owl" and "delicious".
      • The Wonderbolts go untranslated in all but one episode. In "The Ticket Master" they're called "Les Flèches de l'Air" (lit. "The Arrows of the Air/Air's Arrows").
  • Inconsistent Spelling: Besides some character names (see the Characters pages for those), a few other names haven't always been spelled the same by official sources, such as Manehatten/Manehattan.
  • I Need a Freaking Drink: Every so often, a pony grabs some juice and starts chugging.
    • In the pilot, Twilight empties a bottle into a glass and starts to drink it through a straw.
    • At the fancy party that Rarity is attending, she throws down a glass like a shot when the other Mane Cast start to terrorize it.
  • I Need to Go Iron My Dog:
    • In the episode "Boast Busters", Twilight is afraid of being labeled a braggart, and so balks at using her magical skills to one-up a boastful unicorn. She finally beats a hasty retreat by claiming, "I think I hear my laundry calling."
      • Possibly Played With, also in "Boast Busters", when Spike makes a somewhat panicked exit after declaring that Twilight is the most magical unicorn in Ponyville while standing beside his crush Rarity who is also a unicorn, not giving an even remotely reasonable explanation but exclaiming: "Oh, um... *cough* Hey, Rarity...I...MUSTACHE!" immediately before darting off screen.
    • In "Look Before You Sleep", both Rarity and Applejack try to get out of Twilight's slumber party (or rather, spending time with each other) by suddenly remembering pressing engagements. Rarity's is plausible but vague, but Applejack's is simply, "I'm powerful late for... something."
    • In "Party of One", Rainbow Dash actually draws a wristwatch on her foreleg in order to have an excuse to say "Oh, look at the time!" and get out of explaining to Pinkie why she and Fluttershy can't attend her next party. She and Fluttershy then claim to be late to house — sorry, cavesitting for a vacationing bear (that loves to play seashells and collect volleyball).
      • This being Pinkie Pie, she finds this excuse to be the most plausible excuse any of her friends have come up with, compared to: Twilight studying for the princess — which is her favorite spare time activity, Applejack picking apples — which, as the head of an apple orchard, is something she does almost every day, and Rarity washing her hair (although Rarity did stick her head directly into the trash can to make the excuse more believable, because Pinkie told her her hair looked clean).
    • In "Sweet and Elite", Rarity has a series of them whilst trying to make excuses so she can switch between a fancy garden party and Twilight Sparkle's birthday party. Whilst initially she goes with sensible ones like "I need the little filly's room", she runs out of scenarios quickly and finally winds up just saying "I have to... to go to the-to the thing with the... stuff, you know..."
    • In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 2", Twilight, who is trying to control her new powers gained from the other three princesses, says "Gotta go... somewhere... else." to avoid talking to Spike.
  • Inflating Body Gag:
    • In "Feeling Pinkie Keen", Pinkie Pie's "Pinkie Sense" makes her twitch all over—in anticipation of a "doozy" happening soon—and this includes her spontaneously inflating very briefly.
    • Takes a more grotesque turn in "Too Many Pinkie Pies": Twilight casts a spell to send the clones back to the Mirror Pool, and this makes the clones inflate and pop first.
    • In "Spike at Your Service", while desperately looking for some way to help, Spike offers to help Applejack with breathing. He shoves a fireplace bellows into AJ's mouth and pumps hard enough to inflate her.
    • In "Simple Ways", Pinkie gasps so hard that her head inflates, and she just floats off-screen.
    • In "Discordant Harmony", Discord calms himself down by breathing into a paper bag. The bag stays still, while Discord inflates and deflates as he breathes.
  • Inherently Funny Words: According to Pinkie Pie, "Chimicherrychanga", "Kumquat" and "Pickle barrel".
  • Injured Limb Episode: In "Read It and Weep", Rainbow Dash injures her wing and has to go to hospital. She is bored and takes up reading the Daring Do books. In the book she was reading, Daring Do's wing was injured too.
  • In Name Only: The main cast all take the names and basic appearances of characters from previous generations of the franchise, but the resemblance pretty much ends there. Lauren Faust primarily based the Mane Cast's personalities on how she used to play with her own My Little Pony toys as a kid — toys that weren't even of the same characters except for Applejack. She also used the ponies from the G1 cartoon as inspiration.
  • Innocuously Important Episode:
    • The Season 2 episode "It's About Time" is a typical slice-of-life episode whith Twilight having to learn not to worry so much about what might happen tomorrow after spending the week trying to prevent upcoming disasters. At the same time, it's setting up two huge Season Finale crises:
      • In that episode, Twilight had to bring Cerberus back to the Gates of Tartarus where he belongs. In the Season 4 finale, we learn that Tirek, one of the most dangerous creatures in Equestria, escaped from jail during that time.
      • It also introduces a time-travel spell created by Starswirl the Bearded. Twilight makes a point that it can only be used once, so you'd think it couldn't show up again, right? Except that, as demonstrated by the Season 5 finale, the spell, altered by a very skilled unicorn alongside the use of an Amplifier Artifact, can have absolutely devastating effects.
    • Magical Mystery Cure“ seems to just be an episode about the problem of the week that the Mane Six will of course overcome by the end...which they do but Twilight also becomes not just an alicorn but a princess as well.
    • "Appleoosa's Most Wanted" is at first a self-standing episode in which the Cutie Mark Crusaders help an older stallion to find the real meaning of his Cutie Mark. Later on in the season, it turns out helping other ponies realize their talents is their own special talent.
  • Insane Troll Logic:
    • In "MMMystery on the Friendship Express", Pinkie Pie makes wild assumptions that the other three bakers were responsible for eating her cake, skipping the part where you give reasons to your conclusions entirely. Twilight quickly points out that each of her claims were ridiculous.
    • In "Applebuck Season", a sleep-deprived Applejack uses this to justify all the ways she mishears Pinkie Pie's list of ingredients for the muffins they're making.
    Pinkie Pie: A cup of flour...
    Applejack: "A cup o' sour?" Well, lemons are sure sour...
    • Rainbow Dash has had this on occasions. First when Rarity asked her how to make a dress, she wanted her to make it twenty percent cooler. Another instance we have her wanting to choose a pet, and she lists "coolness, awesomeness, and radicalness" as three different categories, and of course she never explains the difference.
    • Twilight Sparkle, while normally logical and calculating, has fallen to this a few times, most notably when she's trying to impress Princess Celestia. In "Lesson Zero", Twilight is about to miss sending the princess her weekly letter. Twilight responds that if she misses one assignment, the princess will think Twilight is not taking her studies seriously, and give her a test. If Twilight fails the test, she'll be sent back a grade. But because of how much she failed, she'll be sent to magic kindergarten. Therefore, missing any assignment will cause Twilight to go back to kindergarten.
    • In "Equestria Games", when the torch seemingly lights up on its own, Spike concludes he must have lit it with his mind.
  • Insistent Terminology:
  • Interquel: The German magazine comic Apple Blooms großes Abenteuer is about the first meetup of the Cutie Mark Crusaders, and is thus set after the episode "Call of the Cutie" and before all of the episodes involving the club.
  • Interspecies Romance:
    • Mules and donkeys have appeared in various episodes, which leads to the conclusion that ponies can have babies with donkeys.
    • Also, Spike the dragon's one-sided crush on Rarity the unicorn. Fortunately, with the show's Y rating, we can rest assured that we will be spared the mental imagery of their unholy offspring.
    • One of The Hub's Royal Wedding bumpers gives Spike a crush on Tori Spelling.
  • In the Name of the Moon: The first preformance of the mares as magical girls involved this; it's completely improvised, and almost perfectly executed (you can see Twilight's eyes glancing down for a second, looking for the right words) because Twilight Sparkle is just that eloquent. An especially ironic example given who the villain is.
  • Invisible Backup Band: This happens pretty much anytime anypony bursts into song.
  • Invisible Means Undodgeable: Unicorn magic, having clearly dodgeable projectiles, as well as unstoppable telekinesis-styled magic.
  • Invisible Parents:
    • The parents of Twilight Sparkle (whose parents were mysteriously absent for most of their son's wedding episode but appear at the end, as well as in flashbacks), Rarity, and Pinkie Pie have only been shown on screen as cameos, though Twilight And Pinkie's later get A Day in the Limelight. Justified with Pinkie's as they live far out of town. Fluttershy's and Rainbow Dash's parents are not seen or mentioned until until their debuts in Season 6 (along with Fluttery's brother) and 7 respectively. Rainbow Dash had a reason she was avoiding her parents. Season 7 all but states and Word of Saint Paul confirms Applejack's parents are dead, which proir episodes hinted at.
    • Outside the six main characters, this trope is played very much straight with Scootaloo, having led to fan theories that she may be an orphan and that she wants Rainbow Dash to treat her like sister because she never had a family. In Season 4, the house she lives in is shown, looking pretty ordinarily, but still no parent in sight. It is even more noticeable when they are absent when their daughter celebrates getting her Cutie Mark. Finally explained and averted in Season 9's "The Last Crusade"; both her parents are adventurer types who study exotic wildlife to find new medicines for ponies and are therefore almost always absent from home.
  • Invisible Writing: As a practical joke, Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash replace Twilight Sparkle's ink with invisible ink. Twilight eventually did the same thing to Princess Celestia.
  • iPhony: In the "There's a Pony for That" promo.
  • Irony:
    • Twilight is reluctant to make friends; Nightmare Moon can only be defeated with the Elements of Harmony, which are powered by friendship.
    • Queen Chrysalis is powered by love, yet she is defeated by it.
    • Sweetie Belle even lampshades how ironic life can get in "One Bad Apple" when they realize they've resorted to bullying to get back at a formerly bullied bully who was only bullying them to avoid getting bullied herself (try saying that ten times fast!).
    • Meta Example: None of the American voice actors for the main characters are American, they're all Canadian. (Although one of them lives and works in California.)
    • "Weird Al" Yankovic guest-voiced a character on the show named Cheese Sandwich. Weird Al himself is a vegan.
    • In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 2", it's Discord, of all creatures, that hands Twilight the final key to help her open the box.
    • Starlight Glimmer stole the cutie marks of everypony from the village, but she still has her own.
    • The Cutie Mark Crusaders spent five whole seasons obsessing over getting their Cutie Marks. When they decided to stop worrying about getting their Cutie Marks, they immediately got them.
    • The Mane Six's Evil Doppelgänger lookalikes were created from trees, yet they are destroyed by one.
    • Chrysalis made the clones for the purpose of destroying the Mane Six and Starlight, but once they find the Elements, the clones are what get destroyed.
    • Chancellor Neighsay is against the idea of Twilight's School of Friendship involving non-pony creatures because he claims they will use that knowledge to take over Equestria and use it against ponykind. Ultimately, Cozy Glow, a pony, is the one who does just that, and Neighsay eventually realizes the error of his ways and apologizes.
  • Ironic Echo: Played With. During "Sonic Rainboom", Fluttershy says to Rainbow Dash (who's suffering from a bad case of stage fright) that there's no reason to feel nervous about facing a crowd of ponies who will watch, criticize, and judge each and every one of her moves. Later, during "Green Isn't Your Color", Photo Finish gives Fluttershy a similar speech when the nervous pegasus is about to begin her first modeling pass.
    • "Pinkie Pie, you are so random." has a very different connotation between "Griffon the Brush Off" and "Swarm of the Century".
    • In "Party of One", Pinkie says "Okie dokie lokie" with great enthusiasm. The next time she says it, however, it's with great skepticism.
    • In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 2", Applejack delivers a real stinging one to Discord after Tirek betrays him, reflecting what he told Fluttershy earlier:
    Applejack: Surely you saw this coming.
    Discord: I didn't. I truly didn't.
    • From a dramatic stand point, Tirek giving Discord the medallion has this happen when Discord gives it to Twilight.
  • Istanbul (Not Constantinople): Strangely averted by characters making references to our Earth — Twilight calling Spike "Casanova" and "Romeo"; Spike wanting a "Fu Manchu beard" in "Boast Busters"; and "Suited For Success" with French haute couture, Dutch apple pie, and constellations as seen from Earth including Sagittarius, Orion, and Canis Major — as well as the Ursas Major and Minor.
    • Characters have spoken in familiar languages and accents (French, German, Italian, Brooklyn, etc.).
  • It Can't Be Helped: Rarity says this in the Japanese dub in "Stare Master" when she says that she can't host Sweetie Belle's sleepover.
  • It's Always Spring: Things generally seem to take place in summer unless the plot demands otherwise ("Winter Wrap Up", "Fall Weather Friends" two episodes later for some reason, "Hearth's Warming Eve", "Luna Eclipsed" which was Nightmare Night/Halloween...). It doesn't stop the foals from having school though.
  • It Runs in the Family: In the Season 2 finale, Shining Armor says the breastplate he wants to wear for the wedding — which has the same six-pointed star that features prominently on his and Twilight's cutie marks — "was my favorite uncle's".
  • It's Personal:
  • "I Want" Song:
  • I Warned You: Nearly every episode in which Twilight isn't the main focus has her basically lampshading the Aesop partway through the story. The Idiot Ball is essentially the only reason she lacks this kind of foresight in her own episodes.
  • I Wish It Were Real: Some bronies wished the show's ponies were real (either to show their fondness to the characters or they genuinely wished they exist in real life). Fan works depicting them as pets, friends or them popping out of TV screens/monitors or coming to life from paper drawings are common within the fandom (with Pinkie Pie being depicted quite often for obvious reasons).
    • Longing for Fictionland: The reverse is also prominent within the fandom. Fan works and discussions about what would happen if they get transported to Equestria are quite common. Often it involves turning into ponies themselves.

    J 
  • Jerkass: The Mane Six have encountered their fair share of them.
    • Gilda from "Griffon the Brush Off".
    • Silver Spoon and Diamond Tiara, the latter moreso.
    • Prince Blueblood turns out to be nothing more than "the plot".
    • The Flim Flam Brothers from "Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000". They take this trope to such an extreme that, by the end of the episode, the entire populace of Ponyville runs them out of town.
    • The teenage dragons Spike encounters during "Dragon Quest". They bully Spike, call Celestia a "namby-pamby pony princess", and want to eat the Phoenix eggs.
    • Lightning Dust in Season 3's "Wonderbolts Academy". She caused the other cadets to spin out of an obstacle course, and caused a tornado in order to clear the most clouds despite already being so far ahead it was redundant. The move went out of control and destroyed a portion of Cloudsdale, as well as swallowed up Rainbow's friends who just happened to fly in to visit. Rainbow Dash managed to save her friends, while Lightning Dust makes light of the situation afterward. Rainbow Dash angrily called her out on her stunts that could have potentially hurt some ponies or worse, but that she didn't seem to care because they "won".
  • Jerkass Ball: A large premise in most episodes (often combined with Idiot Ball). The main dilemma of some stories is caused by one of the ponies acting arrogant, self-centered or even borderline insane. Every character bounces this at least once in the series (usually in their limelight episodes).
  • Jerkass Has a Point:
    • In "The Cutie Pox", Diamond Tiara probably only calls Apple Bloom out on her cutie marks which were caused by the Cutie Pox being fake in order to take her down a peg when a second one appears, since she hates anypony taking the spotlight away from her. Still, she's 100% right, and even the teacher Cheerilee shares her skepticism.
    • Queen Chrysalis also gets one when she brags to the cast that she managed to carry out her plan to take over Equestria even when Twilight Sparkle thinks something is wrong with Princess Cadance who was actually Chrysalis herself in disguise thanks to all of Twilight's friends not believing her and coldly walking out on her when she tried to explain herself. It was at that point when the others have a Jerkass Realization and apologize to Twilight.
    • In "Inspiration Manifestation", while the puppeteer could have been nicer about his criticism towards the puppet theater Rarity built, ample stage space and mobility are far more important for a traveling puppeteer than how shiny it looks.
  • Jerk Jock: The three male pegasi who bully Rainbow Dash in Cloudsdale. Their cutie marks are a dumbbell, three basketballs, and three American footballs.
    • Rainbow Dash herself and Applejack are milder examples of Jerk Jocks when they laugh at Twilight for entering the Running of the Leaves.
  • Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Rainbow Dash is this the majority of the time, being egotistical and aggressive, but loyal and altrustic to her friends. Do not bully them.
    • Rarity can be considered a mild example; she's vain and greedy at times, but it is heavily outweighed by her generosity and empathetic moments.
    • Fluttershy's pet rabbit, Angel Bunny. He comes off as an abrasive spoiled child at times but he's shown that he really does care about his owner.
    • Spike also fits. He may be lazy and snarky, but he really cares about Twilight and the others, and is still a good guy.
    • Discord becomes one in "Keep Calm and Flutter On". Sure, he keeps messing around with the ponies, but he really honors Fluttershy as a friend.
  • Job Song:
    • Downplayed for Flim and Flam's cider song, which is mostly just advertising their cider-maker but also about how they're travelling salesponies.
    • In "What My Cutie Mark is Telling Me?", the protagonists, with the exception of Twilight, have swapped cutie marks and are singing about having to do one another's job and not being very good at it.
  • Jokers Love Junk Food: Pinkie Pie, the Element of Laughter, and known to break a fourth wall or two, has a Sweet Tooth and is often seen eating large amounts of candy and dessert.
  • Job's Only Volunteer: Mr. and Mrs. Cake are searching for a babysitter for their kids on short notice. Pinkie Pie is more than eager to take up the task, but the Cakes ask all of the main six ponies first and only ask Pinkie after all the rest say no.
  • Juxtaposed Halves Shot:
    • Used during the song "What My Cutie Mark Is Telling Me" in the episode "Magical Mystery Cure", one shot with all six of the Mane Cast.
    • During the Distant Duet in "Spice Up Your Life", the split screen ends up used to show Rarity's and Pinkie's half-faces split in the middle, followed by Coriander's and Saffron's.

    K 
  • Kafka Komedy: The Cutie Mark Crusaders are a Lighter and Softer variation of this.
  • Karma Houdini: That one big ugly stallion selling cherries who totally screws-over poor Fluttershy in "Putting Your Hoof Down" is not included in Flutter's latter Roaring Rampage of Revenge.
    • Also applies to Discord in the Series Finale: having been the one responsible for freeing a trio of Villains that before posed no serious threat to Equestria, not only does he not get any comeuppance for this act of treason, but he gets to decide the punishment for the Villains.
  • Keep It Foreign: Unlike what happened with the original My Little Pony series, the foreign versions of the show keeps the original MLP logo in English, with only the Friendship is Magic subtitle translated into the local language, possibly due to Hasbro's request, regardless if the viewers, especially the younger ones, can pronounce the name of the show or not.
    • There's a good justification for that: In some languages like Spanish, for putting a good example, the name of the franchise was translated as Mi Pequeño Pony. The problem here is, Mi Pequeño Pony refers to a male pony, and since all the main cast is female, and since Spanish doesn't have gender-neutral versions for the same name, maybe Hasbro decided to use the original English name not only in Spanish but in many other languages too.
    • Also happens in the Japanese version, but dealing with the honorific titles: Princess Celestia (and Luna) are addressed in Japanese with their English title "Princess" (プリンセス) rather than "Hime" (姫) or "Queen" (Jou'ou/女王), since in Japanese culture, a princess is rarely portrayed as a ruler, compared with a queen. But, since Hasbro is possibly forcing the Japanese translators to keep the "Princess" title despite this cultural tidbit, maybe they decided to use the English title as a compromise, though it's worth noting that the Japanese website refers to her as "女王・プリンセスセレスティア" (Jouou Princess Celestia, literally "Queen Princess Celestia", with the Princess title as part of her name in Japanese).
  • Kick the Dog: The Villain Song "This Day Aria". "No I do not love the groom/In my heart there is no room/But I still want him to be all miiine!" Ouch.
  • Kids Are Cruel: The show loves using this trope, and not just for anti-bullying aesops. For example, it's heavily implied that Fluttershy's shyness and performance anxiety came about because of all the bullying she suffered at flight camp. Also, Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon's bullying is shown to have a major effect on Apple Bloom's self-esteem in the episode where the Cutie Mark Crusaders are formed. And if Cozy Glow isn't the most heartless child in Equestria, she's definitely in the running.
  • Killer Rabbit: Angel is a light-hearted take on one. The Parasprites too — especially when they start trying to eat Ponyville.
  • Kneel Before Frodo:
    • In the Season 3 finale, the mane characters and Princess Celestia do this to Twilight Sparkle, who became an alicorn as a result of creating new magic and ascended to princesshood.
    • Also, Luna gets this in the Nightmare Night episode. Occasionally happens to Celestia if she appears suddenly, such as in "Fall Weather Friends".
    • Also, everyone in the Crystal Empire does this to Cadance in the Season 3 openeractivating the Crystal Heart in the process.
    • In "Equestria Games", when praising Spike for saving everypony and the Games, Princess Cadance prostrates herself before him so that her entire body and head are level with the baby dragon's shoulders, and addresses him in the custom of her subjects as Great and Honorable Spike the Brave and Glorious.
  • Knockout Gas: In "MMMystery on the Friendship Express", Pinkie gives explanations for how culprits could have committed a crime, all of which parody movies. One of these involves her getting knocked out by gas.
  • Know Your Vines: In "Bridle Gossip", the Mane Six walk through a patch of bright blue flowers to stop Apple Bloom following Zecora. The next morning they wake with embarrassing changes, such as Pinkie's swollen tongue, that they blame Zecora for. Eventually it is revealed that the flowers were "poison joke" and the effects were pranks. Played by the plant.
  • Kubrick Stare: Pinkie Pie gives a surprisingly chilling one in "Party of One".

 
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Applejack faints

Applejack faints from shock and exhaustion when she sees how many apples she still needs to harvest.

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Main / FaintInShock

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