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

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     L 
  • Ladies and Germs: The show typically uses "fillies and gentlecolts".
  • Lady and Knight: Princess Cadance and Shining Armor are literally a bright lady and white knight.
  • Land of One City: While Equestria is depicted as a fairly large country containing multiple distinct cities, all other species live within isolated self-governing settlements. The changelings, kirin and yaks are the most straightforward examples, being single large settlements with its own rulership, with the caveat that the former live in a giant hive and the latter two are just villages; the Crystal Empire is that in name only, as it otherwise conists of a single city in the middle of a frozen waste; the griffons lack a formal government, but most live in the run-down city of Griffonstone; and the hippogriffs/seaponies technicaly have two cities, Mount Aris and the Underwater City of Seaquestria in the flooded caves below it, but these function as two halves of a single city and share their government and most of their population.
  • Large and in Charge: Everyone who's claimed to be an absolute ruler has towered over their subjects. Princess Celestia and Luna are closer in size to horses, Discord is tall enough to look Celestia in the eye, Queen Chrysalis and King Thorax are about as tall as Celestia despite the changelings being the same size as the little ponies, Rain Shine is similarly proportioned, Dragon Lord Torch is the largest dragon in the show, Chief Thunderhooves is about twice the height of the other buffalo, and Queen Novo and Prince Rutherford stand about a head taller than their respective subjects. In the series finale, set years in the future, Twilight has become Equestria's new ruler and grown as tall as Celestia. Inverted with Ember once she becomes Dragon Lord, as she's the third-smallest dragon seen on-screen.
  • Large Ham: Various characters have had their hammy moments, from Raritynote , to "The Great And Powerful Trixie", to Photo Finish, but perhaps the hammiest of them all is Princess Luna, especially in Luna Eclipsed, where her hammy tendencies go so far that it only makes it all the more difficult to convince the other ponies that she's no longer evil.
  • Last-Second Chance:
    • Celestia offers one to her younger sister, the defeated Nightmare Moon reverted to Princess Luna by the Elements of Harmony. For once, Luna accepts and repents for what she's done. Unsurprising considering the theme of the show and that Word of God has confirmed Princess Luna didn't turn into Nightmare Moon completely of her own accord in the first place.
    • Late in Season 3, Celestia does this once again to Discord, enlisting Fluttershy to reform him. Surprisingly, it (mostly) works.
    • In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 1", according to Tirek's back story, his brother Scorpan tried this after having a Heel–Face Turn, trying to convince him to abandon their plans. Tirek wouldn't listen, so Scorpan had no choice but to arrange for him to be imprisoned in Tartarus.
  • Last-Second Term of Respect: In "Keep Calm and Flutter On", Princess Celestia tasks Twilight and her friends with reforming Discord, something they're not too keen about given what he did to them last time.
    Twilight: With all due respect, Princess Celestia... HOW COULD YOU BRING DISCORD HERE?!?!? (clears throat) ...Your Majesty?
  • The Last Title: "The Last Roundup", "The Last Laugh", "The Last Crusade", and the third part of the three-part Grand Finale, "The Last Problem".
  • Lava Pit: The Dragon Lands are filled with pools of molten rock. The dragons, who are Immune to Fire, like to bathe in them.
  • Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
    • The show frequently has characters hum a portion of the theme tune or that of an older iteration.
    • In the first two seasons, several characters — chiefly Pinkie and Twilight — interact directly with the Iris Out at the end of the episodes.
    • After his reformation, Discord's Reality Warping often interacts with and references the show's fictional nature and popular culture in general.
    • In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 1", Spike says he remembers the events of "Equestria Games" like it was yesterday. It was the previous episode.
  • Leitmotif: They crop up every now and then.
    • Fluttershy's is a slow, instrumental version of the main theme.
    • Pinkie has a cute, bubbly, ditzy one you can hear when she's skipping up to Rainbow Dash in "Griffon the Brush-Off", shortly before Gilda shows up for the first time.
    • Photo Finish has one.
    • Rainbow Dash has a little tone with a bass line.
    • Opalescence has a short but very distinct harpsichord leitmotif.
    • Applejack has a banjo play for her in "Sisterhooves Social" when she gives Rarity sisterhood advice, and in "The Last Roundup" when speaking to the citizens of Ponyville about the rodeo.
    • A cheery motif is often played when the Elements of Harmony are referenced, or the Mane 6 are working together as a team. The most cinematic version plays over the Award Ceremony at the conclusion of "The Return of Harmony, Part 2".
    • Discord and Nightmare Moon/Princess Luna have their own themes as well. Discord's theme overlaps and meshes well with the similar "chaos/disharmony" theme.
    • Luna has a slow theme for choirnote  and harp that signals her entrances in "Sleepless in Ponyville" and "For Whom the Sweetie Belle Toils".
    • The chest from the Tree of Harmony and the six key items to unlock it have their own distinct musical sting.
  • Let's Get Dangerous!:
    • Twilight Sparkle is pretty frequently the butt of jokes and early episodes had her learning social skills. Just don't threaten her, her friends, or her town, lest she remind you that she is the magical prodigy student of a solar god-empress.
    • Doubly so Fluttershy — usually timid as anything, and unable to stand up for herself, but threatening others can make her angry enough to forget herself and suddenly have enough attitude for a grade-A badass, as well as a Death Glare powerful enough to cow fully-grown dragons and win staring contests with cockatrices.
    • It's arguable whether Rainbow Dash herself falls into this trope. She spends a large amount of time in the show acting like an egotistical buffoon and often screws things up due to her arrogance or as a display of power from a newcomer. Keep in mind however, she perfected the Sonic Rainboom, while saving Rarity and all the Wonderbolts from falling to their death at that. It's also often a bad idea to pick on Fluttershy.
    • Pinkie Pie provides a more mundane example. When she realizes she hasn't been particularly responsible caring for the twins she's babysitting, she becomes far more serious and strict. It lasts about as long as it takes the pegasus foal to realize he can fly and the unicorn foal to start using her magic.
      • Pinkie Pie's "Pinkie Sense" is mostly used on the show to predict falling objects for slapstick purposes. Then she uses it to save the lives of at least four ponies in a horrific construction site accident.
      • In "Griffon The Brush-Off" Pinkie doesn't take Gilda seriously no matter how much she tries to tell her to "buzz off", only telling herself that she's jealous of her (despite the latter in fact being a Bitch In Griffon's Clothing) and that Gilda just needs to improve her attitude. But when she sees Gilda blowing a gasket at Fluttershy...
      Pinkie: She's a grump, and a thief, and a bully! The meanest kind of mean meanie-pants there is! I can take it, but no one treats Fluttershy like that. No. One. This calls for extreme measures — Pinkie Pie style!
    • When he sees his beloved Rarity being kidnapped by the Diamond Dogs, "Little Spiky Wikey" just outright starts beating them up. He loses, sadly, but puts up a good fight. Not to be outdone, Rarity manages to inconvenience the Diamond Dogs with wit and whining.
    • In the Season 2 finale, the entire team successfully fights off dozens of monsters. Dozens. Pinkie Pie weaponizes her Party Cannon, and Rarity slaps some into submission with a grin on her face. Even Fluttershy manages to trick a few. Problem is, the Big Bad has thousands of mooks to spare. It is still the second legitimate action sequence on the show, and demonstrates that the team is quite capable even without the Elements of Harmony.
    • In the same episode as above, Celestia attempts to do this; indeed, many bronies let out a cheer as she finally declared that she'd had enough of Chrysalis's machinations and engaged in a full-on beam struggle with the Changeling queen... at which point she promptly gets knocked unconscious with one attack.
    • Good old Applejack, an earth pony who mainly serves as the Team Mom, often gets overlooked despite being strong enough to knock every single apple from a tree simply by kicking it. Then Season 3 comes around and she takes out a trio of timber wolves with nothing but rocks and her own cunning.
    • Seriously, don't screw with the Cutie Mark Crusaders. When they've finally been pushed too far by Babs Seed the A-Team music plays, they build an entire motorized parade float in less than a night, fit it with a booby-trap (made from an egg timer) that will send it careening off a cliff at precisely the right time, and lure Babs into stealing it with a Batman Gambit. They even plant a mattress to land on when she shoves them out of the way, and the only reason it fails is because they have a sudden attack of conscience and save her (the plan itself had otherwise worked beautifully).
    • The episode "Maud Pie" introduces Pinkie's sister, Maud. Even after prolonged contact, she is quite clearly an Emotionless Girl who is only interested in rocks. But when Pinkie gets caught in an avalanche, Maud reacts while everyone else is still gaping, covers several hundred yards in seconds, then pounds a house-sized boulder into gravel with a pair of jackhammer hooves. Jaw Drops all around.
    • In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 2", once Tirek destroys the library, all bets are off and Twilight goes full throttle on him with her power.
  • Let's Mock the Monsters:
    • Pinkie's "Giggle at the Ghosties" song is about overcoming fear by having a laugh at what scares you.
    • Rarity also pulls this on the Diamond Dogs in "A Dog and Pony Show", where she keeps up a stream of disparaging comments about their behavior, habits and personal hygiene.
      Rarity: What is that smell?
      Diamond Dog: Smell?
      Rarity: Ah. Mystery solved. It's your breath.
  • Let's Split Up, Gang!:
    • In Part 2 of "The Return of Harmony", Discord separates the mane ponies in the hedge maze, prompting them to find their way through until they meet up, as part of his plan to corrupt them into being unable to use the Elements.
    • In "The Mean 6", Fluttershy strays away from the gang on a camping retreat to help a baby bird, while Pinkie races far away from them to the campsite near the Tree of Harmony, resulting in the girls splitting up to find them; at the same time, their Evil Doppelgänger lookalikes are also splitting up to find the Tree of Harmony while secretly plotting to betray Chrysalis. This causes both groups to intertwine in various situations which result in a series of horrible misunderstandings, making the real ponies hate each other for the episode.
  • Lethal Chef:
    • Applejack, who is otherwise one of the best cooks in town, becomes one in "Applebuck Season" when under the effects of overwork and (heavily implied) sleep deprivation.
    • It's entirely possible that Pinkie Pie is one, what with Mr. and Mrs. Cake being uncertain about leaving the shop in her hooves without an experienced baker to help her. The fact that she's a poor judge of taste (she has no problem eating cupcakes that are badly burnt or covered in hot sauce), and the wrapped candies and bestickèd lollipops she tosses into Apple Bloom's cupcakes reinforce their suspicions. She got a lot better by the end of the first season, though she still does some questionable things (like letting Gummy swim in the punch bowl).
    • There's also Apple Bloom's short-lived attempt at baking from "Call of the Cutie".
    • Sweetie Belle is currently the reigning champion—she somehow is able to burn juice and makes toast that has to be served in a bowl. It looks like burnt pudding.
    • Spike in "Spike at Your Service", when he tries to help Applejack and Granny Smith bake pies. He winds up burning it to charcoal, and Rarity was unfortunately made to eat some.
  • Lethally Stupid: Lightning Dust. Full stop. Although she does show lack of concern for the safety of others with her reckless flying, her goal is to be #1, not to intentionally cause harm to others.
  • Let Us Never Speak of This Again: Rarity says this word for word in "The Return of Harmony, Part 2". It takes all of five minutes for it to be spoken of again, though.
  • Licensed Game: Thus far limited to mobile apps:
  • Light 'em Up: Unicorns can light up the tips of their horns to illuminate dark places. This seems to be a low-level ability, since Snails and Rarity are able to do this as well as Twilight.
  • Lightning Can Do Anything: It topples trees, strikes down royal guardsponies, does massive damage to town halls, gives Spike (and Pinkie Pie) the hiccups, and is a handy general-purpose fright prank.
  • Lightning Bruiser: Rainbow Dash is guilty of this, as is Pinkie Pie, at least when you make her very, very, very, VERY angry, or break a Pinkie promise.
  • Lineage Ladder: Played for Laughs in "Over a Barrel", when Chief Thunderhooves describes the sacred buffalo trails to his pony visitors.
    Chief Thunderhooves: We have a long and winding stampeding trail that we have run upon for many generations. My father stampeded upon these grounds, and his father before him. And his father before him, and his father before him, and his father before him...
  • Literal Metaphor:
    • In "Call of the Cutie", when Apple Bloom is upset, Rainbow Dash sees her and comments that she has a dark cloud hanging over her head. Fortunately, Rainbow Dash is a weatherpony, and can move the actual dark cloud elsewhere.
    • In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 1", Discord's ears are burning. Yes, literally.
  • Lots of Luggage:
    • Rarity, the resident beauty queen, has her poor little sister drag her luggage to the campsite in an oversized cart in "Sleepless in Ponyville". Her necessities include an entire inflatable house, completely furnished with a queen-sized bed and a matching vase.
      • Though her "poor little sister" proved to be just as much of a heavy packer in "Sisterhooves Social", bringing two mountains of luggage to live with Rarity for just a week. In her fully furnished house.
      • Rarity first does this all the way back in "Sweet and Elite" when she burdens the poor bus boy with a truly ridiculous amount of luggage; he is seen collapsing under the weight of all her bags twice.
      • Parodied in "P.P.O.V. (Pony Point of View)". In Pinkie Pie's flashback, Rarity brings so much luggage to the ship that she needs a dozen ponies to carry them all. Likely exaggerated somewhat, but knowing Rarity it's probably close to the truth. Ironically, in her own flashback she carries just a little bag, except it contains a food tray way too big for it.
    • Pinkie Pie plays with this trope by using Hammerspace extensively, leaving people wondering where she keeps all that stuff.
    • Big Macintosh's insistence on overburdening the Apple family jalopy ends up causing most of the problems in "Pinkie Apple Pie".
  • Loud Gulp: Many times.
  • Love at First Sight: Spike falls in love with Rarity the moment he sees her. However, his crush seems is only shown occasionally, probably due to the preferences of certain writers. For example, in "Ticket Master", he doesn't seem to feel anything for her at all and doesn't react when Rarity talks about her love-destiny "Him". In "Boast Busters", he wants to impress her with a mustache (and beard, for some reason); in "A Dog and Pony Show", he fantasizes about rescuing her from the Diamond Dogs, he's practically all over her in "Green Isn't Your Color", but is ready to leave her behind in favor of his draconic destiny in "Dragon Quest".
  • Lovecraft Lite: The setting is filled with frightening and dagerous creatures and many a Eldritch Abomination, but the heroes have something the villains don't, an Instant-Win Condition that generates whatever Deus ex machina is required.
  • Loyal Phlebotinum: The only ones who can use the Elements of Harmony are Twilight and her friends. This is taken to extreme in "The Mean 6", when Chrysalis creates mean clones of them to get around that fact, but once they find them, the Elements quickly recognize the clones as fake and turn dark in response to each clone acting the opposite of the respective Element they represent. Once all the gems turn dark, the Tree protects itself by destroying the clones and turning them back into wood.

    M 
  • MacGuffin Blindness: In Season 4, the Mane 6 find that they are searching for six keys to open a locked box that the Tree of Harmony left them. Over the course of the season, each Mane received an object that glowed with a rainbow hue, but none of them realized their significance until the season finale, where it was revealed that those objects were, in fact, the keys needed to open the box.
  • Made of Good: The Elements of Harmony are made of positive qualities of friends, while the Fire of Friendship is made of friendship.
  • Mad God: Discord, as the Lord of Chaos, is this to a T, best shown during his time as a villain in the Season 2 premiere. He fittingly provides the trope image.
  • Mad Libs Dialogue: Treehouse TV's flash game Magical Moments Storybook and the iOS game Twilight Sparkle: Teacher for a Day both have this.
  • Mage Species: The unicorns are basically this with regards to other ponies. Only they are able to consciously perform magic and all of them are born with this ability; although many unicorns pursue non-magical careers, seemingly only able to perform basic telekinesis and magic related to their special talent. More advanced magic requires extensive studies.
  • Magic A Is Magic A: Magic can mostly do whatever suits the plot. However, Twilight Sparkle, an ardent student of the subject, insists that real magic has some rules. These are left vague, but she speaks of how it comes from within, and also how it is done consciously and studied. The closest thing to rules that appear in practice relates to there being different types of magic, which could be called Magic A, B, C, and a bunch of other letters.
    • Magic A is the obvious magic, unicorn magic. Every unicorn has some limited telekinesis for lifting small to medium-sized objects, plus a suite of spells related to their main talent; ergo, a unicorn whose cutie mark signified a particular skill for baking would have spells for getting dough to rise, batter to come together, what have you. Rarity has magic consistent with these rules, her powers are limited to telekinesis and the added abilities to detect buried gemstones and merge fabrics. Twilight Sparkle is a rare unicorn in that her talent is the use and understanding of magic itself, so she can potentially learn any spell. Her talent is considered great even when compared to most other unicorns with a talent in magic.
      • Unicorn magic is intimately tied to spells. Spells are something that can be read and learnt from books. It's not so clear what those books actually say, since the casting of a spell always involves nothing but mental effort and the unicorn's horn glowing. They are not external incantations; in the episode "Bridle Gossip", Twilight insist that there is no such thing as curses because curses are "artificial" and produced by external acts. However, the one spell we're given any detail about, Star Swirl the Bearded's unfinished masterpiece in "Magical Mystery Cure", is given as a rhyme (that doesn't rhyme), and the scene looks as if merely reading it out loud causes an effect, although the narration conflicts this somewhat. Go figure.
      • It's suggested (in "Magic Duel") that some specific effects are very difficult or impossible to achieve with (unicorn) magic, such as changing a pony's age or sex. It's also shown that an Amplifier Artifact can enable these up to a point.
      • There are also a few things that unicorn magic is specifically stated to not be able to accomplish. Specifically, creating cutie marks. To demonstrate, Twilight creates several for Apple Bloom, which quickly fade away.
      • Twilight's ability to magically teleport herself and others seems to be limited to line-of-sight destinations. When trapped in a cave in one episode, she only teleports herself out when she finds a portion of the cavern ceiling that's partially collapsed. It's not stated if this is a specific rule of her magic, or her playing it safe and not risking teleporting to someplace she can't see and ending up inside an object she didn't know was there.
    • Magic B is pegasus magic, mainly cloudwalking and weather control, plus some tactile telekinesis for towing things while in flight. Ducks also seem to be able to walk on clouds, so, you know, *shrug*.
    • Magic C is the least obvious: earth pony magic. Earth ponies, according to Word of God, have more strength and stamina than unicorns or pegasi of similar physique, and have an innate connection with the earth; so, for example, a farm run by earth ponies would outproduce a farm run by unicorns if all else were equal, simply by virtue of being tended by earth ponies. This also applies to magical crops, such as the Zap Apple.
    • And beyond these types is Magic P, wielded by laughter-made-earth-pony-incarnate Pinkie Pie. Most of what she does is not so much "magic" as "going just a little Beyond the Impossible because of the Rule of Funny". Broadly, her ability is to behave like an archetypical classic cartoon character like Bugs Bunny. Over time it has become clear that this limited form of reality warping seems to be inherent in "party ponies" (like Cheese Sandwich), ponies whose special talent involves spreading fun and laughter to others (albeit Pinkie seems to be an extreme example). The only clear limits seem to be that many of these abilities cease to work if the situation is serious/dangerous enough.
      • She also has "Pinkie Sense", an ability to foretell upcoming events by various twitches and feelings in her body. It is precise and consistent enough for the residents of Ponyville to record and use them. It also only works for things in the near future, and has no consistency with any known form of magic at all, much to Twilight's frustration.
      • There's also her ability, or not, of Breaking the Fourth Wall. The fandom has taken this quite far, but Word of God denies her having such abilities. What can mostly be observed in the series is a propensity to use the Aside Glance more often than other characters, and talking through the Iris Out at the end of an episode a few times. Word of God claims the former was just animation errors, and the latter might just be too silly to count as having actually happened in-universe. Anyways, the fans certainly like to take it further.
    • And then there's Magic D wielded by the Reality Warper Mad God Embodiment of Disharmony Discord. Discord himself doesn't follow any rules, but other magic users have managed to counter his spells, if not his raw power, so his magic seems to follow rules that others understand. In Season 5 his magic is referred to as "chaos-based" by Fluttershy, and when his magic is drained in Season 4 it looks nothing like any other magic Tirek drains.
    • As of Season 3, there is also Magic E, which was initially unnamed, but causes a non-standard purple horn aura and green eyes. It was initially used by King Sombra and Princess Celestia, and Twilight was able to copy it from Princess Celestia. The three of them used it to control the crystals of the Crystal Empire, and it seemed to run off of negative emotions, although it didn't seem to be inherently evil or even dangerous by itself. The magic was dubbed dark magic by the fans, but the show itself only uses that as a generic term for magic used for evil purposes, and Twilight was referring to a trap that Sombra had made when she said that. The actual name of Sombra's magic seems to be alicorn magic.
    • In a show with a name like this, one must not forget Magic F: the magic of friendship. It's not just figurative; in fact, it's about the most powerful kind of magic. In general, emotions can be used to power magic — not always in a positive sense.
      • The Elements of Harmony are "the most powerful magic known to ponydom", an Ancient Artifact set consisting of the elements of Honesty, Kindness, Laughter, Generosity, Loyalty, and Magic (i.e. Friendship, because, after all, see show title), and powered by those things in the hearts of the ones wielding them. They unleash a Care-Bear Stare that can defeat just about any evil.
      • The ponies themselves apparently have an inbuilt power to unleash a "Fire of Friendship" that keeps them warm and burns evil creatures, powered by love and friendship and channeled through a unicorn pony. This plays a part in the story of the founding of their country Equestria, as seen in "Hearth's Warming Eve".
      • It's also possible for an evil Emotion Eater to do the converse and feed on emotions, as with the Windigos feeding off on hate and the Changelings gaining power by draining a being's love for another.
      • The Crystal Empire — or rather, its citizens — can radiate emotions all over Equestria. They have a special Crystal Heart for focusing positive emotions in a way that can ward off evil.
      • This is featured heavily in the refrain of "You'll Play Your Part" in "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 1". As Princesses of the Day and Night, Celestia and Luna's magics are tied to their roles in raising and lowering the sun and moon, respectively, and Cadance's love magic is what helps her protect the Crystal Empire; the clear implication is that Twilight's role as Princess will be tied to her Element of Magic in the Elements of Harmony.
    • Lord Tirek (and likely his brother, Scorpan) wields Magic G: The power of Energy Absorption. Specifically he cannot steal a creature's abilities when he absorbs their magic; rather, he can only convert it into making his own magic stronger. To further ground it, he explains in "Frenemies", when faced with a non-sentient magical Force Field, that he can only absorb energy from living beings.
    • Certain plants, especially those inside the Everfree Forest, seem to have an odd kind of miscellaneous magic.
      • The zebra Zecora seems to have no innate magic herself, but she can brew potions that can do just about anything. One important ingredient we've seen her use is the Heart's Desire flower, which has magical powers even without mixing it into a potion. On a related note, Zecora is able to teach Twilight Sparkle about magic, which also implies that she either uses or has studied some of the same principles as unicorns.
      • Poison Joke is a plant that can cause humorous curses on anyone treading in it. Except, you know, they're not curses because there's no such thing, but apart from that...
      • Zap Apples are rectangular rainbow apples that grow on trees that become instantly fully-grown when their seeds are planted in the ground. The Zap Apples themselves appear instantly after a few signs and ripen quickly over the course of a week, then disappear in a flash after a certain amount of time. Making good Zap Apple jam requires following a set of bizarre rituals worked out by trial and error that work for no apparent reason other than "Magic is just funny that way."
    • Dragons have their own weird rules that aren't exactly normal physiology. For example, greed can make one grow. As in, from 2 feet to 100 feet in five minutes. Spike himself can use his fire to teleport messages to and from Princess Celestia, an ability seemingly unique to the two of them.
    • Regardless of its source, large amounts of unstable magic (even magic created by the Elements of Harmony) have also repeatedly been shown to have dangerous potential effects on unprepared minds. Such individuals can be overwhelmed and driven insane, their usual characters replaced by monsters that take a particular care or passion the character had (gaining power or knowledge for instance) up to eleven and prioritize it to the exclusion of all else.
  • Magic Fire:
    • Dragons can breathe a type of fire used to deliver messages.
    • The Fire of Friendship is a type of magic fire used to defeat Windigoes (ice monsters that feed on resentment).
    • Queen Chrysalis' magic is often associated with green fire.
  • Magical Underpinnings of Reality: A major conceit of the series is that practically all aspects of life in Equestria depend on everyone Painting the Frost on Windows; almost all the natural aspects of the MLP world, or at least of Equestria, seem to be managed by ponies. Changing the seasons, taking care of animals, moving clouds to make it rain, bringing the water up from lakes to make clouds themselves, to even moving the sun and moon through the sky to make day and night. The Everfree Forest, Froggy Bottom Bog, and the Fire Swamp are regarded as scary and abnormal precisely because nature takes care of itself.
  • Magic Is Mental: Advanced unicorn magic requires complete concentration. Any sort of distraction, from a stray thought to being smacked on the horn, can cause a spell to fail.
  • Magic Potion: Zecora and Mage Meadowbrook are a zebra and an earth pony, and so don't have any of the direct magical abilities that unicorns do. However, they are both very skilled at creating magic potions and brews, as well as medicines, solvents and similar substances.
  • Magitek: This turns up from time to time, such as rotor used by Tank's flying apparatus (which noticeably has no anti-torque tail rotor, so magic must account for this as well), which had an unicorn-type magical aura on it (that happened to match the colour of Princess Celestia's magic aura), and Flim and Flam powering their cider machine directly with their magic.
  • Magnetic Plot Device: The post-Season 5 show has the Cutie Map, which can summon any of the Mane Six to deal with friendship crises anywhere in Equestria. It also signals them when they've solved the crisis at hoof.
  • Manchild: The main characters are all responsible young adults (with the possible exception of Pinkie Pie). Their behavior, on the other hand, often ranges from emotionally immature (generally, to set up a lesson in friendship) to downright childlike. For example, take the following bon mot from cosmopolitan fashion designer and social climber Rarity, upon hearing that a game of Pin the Tail on the Pony is starting: "Oh, my favorite game! Can I go first? Can I have the purple tail?".
  • Manipulative Bastard: Cozy Glow. She charms her way into passing her School of Friendship test by convincing everyone that she purposefully failed the exam because she wanted to convince Twilight that the CMC still needed to learn about friendship. She spends the next several episodes surreptitiously sewing self-doubt and racial discourse amongst the Student Six, and when they threaten to reveal that the Tree of Harmony's roots had grown to underneath the school, she convinces them to stay quiet about it by saying she'll get expelled if the teachers knew she put them in danger by feeding their division. In the Season 8 finale, she successfully gets the Mane Six to trap themselves in Tartarus while draining all of Equestria's magic, and even has the student body turn against Chancellor Neighsay by reminding them he already tried to have the school shut down once. The only thing that stops her plan is the Tree personally intervening in saving the Student Six from being pulled through the magic-draining portal, so they could undo the spell. This is even lampshaded in episode eight of Season 9 where, after another pony doesn't agree to help her unlawfully scale Mt. Everhoof, she screams about how ponies are supposed to do what she asks them to.
    "It's like my thing!"
  • Masculine Lines, Feminine Curves: Female ponies have rounded snouts, while male ones have blocky, squared-off muzzles.
  • Master-Apprentice Chain: The show's main one began with Starswirl the Bearded, who taught magic and governance to Princess Celestia and Princess Luna. Celestia mentored both Twilight Sparkle and Sunset Shimmer; the chain moved to Twilight Sparkle mentoring Starlight Glimmer; Starlight herself begins teaching Trixie in the later seasons. In Season 8m Twilight, the rest of the Mane Six and Starlight start mentoring the Student Six.
  • Mayfly–December Romance: Spike's crush on Rarity. He's a baby dragon and she's a unicorn. In short, she'll be dead of old age before he finishes puberty. We think. There's not too much known about how dragons age naturally, though we do know that they will Secret of age quickly if they begin hoarding.
  • Meaningful Name: Many of the characters are named after their talents and behaviors. Although, justified for some, as "The Perfect Pear" reveals that at least some ponies go through Meaningful Renames, such as "Chiffon Swirl" renaming herself "Cup Cake" after marrying Carrot Cake.
    • The Mane Cast in particular:
      • Fluttershy for being able to flynote  and for being... well... shy. She was also once saved by a swarm of butterflies.
      • Rainbow Dash, who has rainbow hair but can also fly really fast.
      • Applejack and family, all named after apple-related stuff. Plus, she gathers apples and makes apple "accessories".
      • Pinkie Pie, who is pink and has an affinity for sweets and desserts.
      • Rarity has an affinity for precious gems and jewelry.
      • Twilight Sparkle solved the conflict between the Sun/Day and Moon/Night deities. And her Cutie mark is magic sparkles. One big sparkle surrounded by five smaller ones, just to drive the point home further. Bonus points for her more powerful magic causing sparks to fly from her horn, and her own Element of Magic "ignited by the spark that resides in the heart of us all".
      • Spike has spikes.
    • Trixie uses her magic to do tricks.
    • Photo Finish is a photographer.
    • Applejack's sophisticated, city-dwelling aunt and uncle, seen in "Cutie Mark Chronicles", are named "Orange", as in the phrase "apples and oranges" (which is used to explain how completely different two given things are).
    • Silver Spoon is a Rich Bitch who doesn't appear to be much good for anything.
    • Filthy Rich, a wealthy businesspony who is the father of Diamond Tiara.
    • Spoiled Rich, Diamond Tiara's mother who's just as spoiled and mean as she is, and is the reason why Diamond is an Alpha Bitch in the first place.
    • Scootaloo, who is a demon on her scooter.
    • Princess Celestia, who controls the sun, and her sister Luna, who oversees the moon.
    • Spitfire and Soarin', two members of stunt-flying team "the Wonderbolts".
    • Hoity Toity, who ...is.
    • Snips and Snails, two immature young colts who are named after the "What are little boys made of?" rhyme.
    • Cheerilee even lampshades this when explaining to her students how she got her cutie mark, by explaining that she aims to bring cheer and smiles to the little fillies and colts in her care.
    • This trope was lampshaded again (brilliantly) in "Ponyville Confidential", when Diamond Tiara, having been appointed head of the school newspaper, declares, "I want hard-hitting news and interesting thinkpieces. No more Namby-Pamby stories like last year's editor!", to which Berry Pinch replies, "But Namby-Pamby was a great editor!".
    • Ditzy Doo:
      • Ditzy Doo's name comes from a known piloting maneuver called the dipsy-doodle (bear in mind she can fly) and also comes from her ditzy nature (she went north to get birds that had migrated south, after going west the year before).
      • The dipsy-doodle was commonly employed on the SR71 Blackbird- unfortunately this resulted in many windows breaking as the Blackbirds dipped down to go Supersonic. This fits her charater as she often unintentionally breaks things.
    • Equestria, the name of the land, is derived from "Equus", the genus of the Animal Kingdom containing horses.
    • Discord creates Exactly What It Says on the Tin.
    • The Flim-Flam Brothers are con artists, and their names are a play on the word "flim-flam", an old name for what we would call a con.
    • Starlight Glimmer and Sunburst's hometown is called "Sire's Hollow". A sire is the technical term for the father of a horse, and Sire's Hollow is where their parents still reside.
    • Flurry Heart, the baby of Shining Armor and Cadance, was named after the disaster she caused during her Chrystalling — she started a flurry when her cries broke the Crystal Heart.
  • Meaningful Rename: The Summer Sun Celebration is renamed the Festival of the Two Sisters in the final season, to honor Celestia and Lula following their retirement.
  • Medieval European Fantasy: Particularly in the style of architecture and technology, but for exceptions, see Schizo Tech.
    • The use of heraldic creatures such as dragons and griffons, and monsters drawn from Classical Mythology like minotaurs and Cerberus. This largely stems from Lauren Faust having been a fan of The Chronicles of Narnia at the same time that she played with My Little Pony G1 toys as a child.
  • Melancholy Musical Number:
    • In "Magical Mystery Cure", Twilight botches a spell and causes the rest of the Mane Six to swap destinies (Pinkie Pie gets Applejack's destiny, Applejack gets Rarity's destiny, Rarity gets Rainbow Dash's destiny, Rainbow Dash gets Fluttershy's destiny and Fluttershy gets Pinkie Pie's destiny). Everything turns horrible because none of them are suited to do the others' destinies, and Twilight feels it's her fault and she sings a sad song about how it was her fault and how she has to set things right.
    • In "Crusaders of the Lost Mark", after Diamond Tiara loses the class election to Pipsqueak and her mother berates her for her failure, she sings about how she feels deeply lost and insecure.
  • Memento MacGuffin: All throughout Season 4, the Mane 6 each receive an item from someone they teach their respective elements to. The items are given as thanks, but at the season finale, the items turn out to be keys for the magic box that sprouted from the tree of harmony, which allows them to use rainbow power.
  • Mental Monster: In the episode "Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep?", this is the origin of the Tantabus - it was created by Princess Luna as a manifestation of her guilt to punish herself.
  • Merchandise-Driven: Naturally, but this show deserves special mention for showing how this can have an upside (assuming tons of merchandise for fans to buy doesn't already count as one): The Hub has been really lax about keeping episodes off YouTube and public download sites, since the show itself isn't where the real money is anyway. The full episodes are also posted to their own site six days after airing, though they don't stay up very long.
    • The episode "May the Best Pet Win!" seems to include elements from four different Rainbow Dash toys:
      • The first basic Rainbow Dash toy is accompanied by a squirrel. In the episode, a (flying) squirrel gets several seconds of screen time as Fluttershy shows it off to her... and Rainbow isn't interested.
      • The Riding Along with Rainbow Dash toy is accompanied by a turtle. The episode has a Running Gag in which a tortoise is misidentified as a turtle. Said tortoise eventually becomes Rainbow Dash's pet, Tank. (Word of God says that the episode was conceived and written almost a year before it aired, and the toy was first revealed at around the same time, so there may or may not be a connection here.)
      • Rainbow Dash's photo shoot may have been intended to promote the Fashion Style Rainbow Dash toy.
      • The second basic Rainbow Dash toy is accompanied by a duck. In the episode, the candidates for Rainbow Dash's pet include not one, but two ducks.
    • The Friendship Express Train toy set includes a Pinkie Pie figure. The episode "MMMystery on the Friendship Express" stars Pinkie Pie and is mostly set aboard said Friendship Express Train.
    • The trope is also somewhat inverted; the show's older fanbase has often wished for more show-accurate and age-appropriate merchandise for them, instead of the toy line's intended audience. Hot Topic and several online sites have granted this wish with brony T-shirts and posters which can be seen at cons everywhere during the show's run!
    • A toy set released in August 2012 features Shining Armor and Princess Cadance of "A Canterlot Wedding".
    • Much of the merchandise available in stores and online features characters either never seen on the TV program or mentioned in passing at most, such as Honeybuzz. Merchandise for the program often fetches a heavy premium online, since specific characters and sets can sometimes be hard to find at stores (which isn't surprising when you consider that you've got two fanbases snapping up merch - the children the show is targeted at and the adult/brony base).
  • Mickey Mousing: Notably, every episode has a score composed mostly from scratch rather than relying on library music, although a few cues from previous episodes are sometimes reused. (There's also a specific arrangement of the traditional My Little Pony theme that plays at the end of most, but not all, episodes when Twilight writes her letter to Princess Celestia.) For the use of Standard Snippets, see Suspiciously Similar Song.
  • Mike Nelson, Destroyer of Worlds: Not literal worlds, but you'd be amazed how much wide-scale damage the heroes and their neighbors have done. Fluttershy and Twilight caused the town to be eaten by parasprites, Snips and Snails brought in a giant star bear that could have wrecked the town with ease, Twilight mind controlled a sizable portion of the town into fighting over her doll, the CMC practically Mind Raped Big Macintosh and Cherilee, they pissed off the entire town by exposing/slandering the entire populace, and released the spirit of chaos.
  • Mildly Military: Equestria is shown to have armed forces in the form of an army (royal guards), though they're not really elaborated on very much.
  • Miles Gloriosus: Trixie as the plot of her first appearance. Also, while genuinely brave and heroic, most of the main characters can sometimes be more cowardly than they expected in Played for Laughs moments. Rainbow Dash, Spike and all three Cutie Mark Crusaders are most prone to this.
  • Militaries Are Useless: The Royal Guards are beyond useless to almost tragic levels.
    • Granted nobody expected them to stand up against Nightmare Moon, but even with warning of a potential attack and being fully mobilized and ready, they were subdued by Queen Chrysalis' changeling army in about ten minutes. On the other hoof, the six main characters, without weapons or The Elements of Harmony or any kind of formal training, took down about a hundred of these guys practically effortlessly before finally being grossly outnumbered and surrendering.
    • Their leader Shining Armor has a story-breaking defensive ability that can hold off entire armiesnote , but as a consequence is taken out of action immediately by every villain he faces.
    • Also, they couldn't handle recovering Princess Celestia's pet bird.
  • Mind over Matter:
    • Telekinesis is a standard ability for all unicorns and alicorns.
    • Pegasi seem to have some kind of "tactile telekinesis", because the vehicles they pull behind them hover instead of dangling straight down from the harness. The wheels even rotate without being in contact with any solid surface.
  • Misplaced-Names Poster: The front of the Mayor Mare & Time Turner trading card does this with the names of the two characters on the card.
  • Mix-and-Match Critter: Discord. He has a horse's head, mismatched horns of a deer and a goat, pupils of different sizes, a birdlike left wing, a draconic right wing, the hands of an eagle and lion, the feet of an ox and an alligator, and a serpent tail with a white tuft at the end. It's like a zoo exploded in there.
  • Mobile City: While this isn't given central focus, Cloudsdale — a flying city made out of clouds — moves around through the skies of Equestria, managing the weather and changing the seasons as it goes. A few episodes' stories are set into motion by Cloudsdale's circuit taking it over Ponyville — it passes by in "Hurricane Fluttershy" to pick up a load of water for making rain and in "Tanks for the Memories" to get winter started.
  • The "Mom" Voice:
    • Princess Celestia, over a thousand years old, is well capable of doing the "Mom" voice, particularly with her students, and former students. This is shown time and again in her dealings with Twilight Sparkle, such as when she calls out Twilight for causing chaos in Ponyville after she couldn't come up with a friendship lesson to write about. On the nurturing side of things, she reassures Twilight that she's not laughing at her when Twilight is having trouble deciding what to do with Starlight for assignment after she's saved Equestria, saying she had a similar predicament when she first sent Twilight to Ponyville at the start of the series.
    • Fluttershy can use the "Mom" voice. She demonstrates this in "Dragonshy" when she lectures the huge Dragon for attacking her friends. Very "Mom-like" is her use of "You're bigger than her and you should know better." She also demonstrates this while protecting the Cutie Mark Crusaders from the cockatrice, telling them to get behind her, then sternly scolding the cockatrice, as it is actively turning her to stone, and threatening to inform on it to it's own mother! What's more, she actually wins, shattering the stone that had formed around her by sheer force of will.
      Fluttershy: You! Just who do you think you are going around turning others into stone? You should be ashamed of yourself. I have a good mind to find your mother and tell her what you've been up to, young man. Now you go over there, and turn Elizabeak and my friend Twilight back to normal, and don't ever let me catch you doing this again! Do you understand me?
  • Monster and the Maiden:
    • One of Twilight Sparkle's closest friends is a dragon named Spike. Though it's downplayed, since Twilight actually hatched Spike when she was very young and been raising him since (likely with help from other ponies), so Spike seems to identify more with ponies, rather than dragons. Spike also serves as Twilight's assistant and is her means of contact with Princess Celestia.
    • Fluttershy manages to befriend the Mad God Discord. She's pretty much his Morality Pet and the only character he cares about (except himself, of course).
  • Mood Whiplash: Happens somewhat frequently:
    • Every time there's a two-part story, the first part ends in a dark cliffhanger... followed by the happier ending tune. It's almost a Running Gag, though there's no evidence it's deliberate.
      • The series premiere ends with a cliffhanger as the Big Bad brings about eternal night, then suddenly the happy ending tune kicks in.
      • The Season 2 premiere takes it up to eleven and beyond in both directions. Start with an argument between the Cutie Mark Crusaders. Move on to cotton-candy clouds raining chocolate milk and corn popping off its stalks. Then we have Discord turning all the Mane Cast (except Twilight) into their polar opposites and tricking them into losing his challenge to find the Elements of Harmony. Just as he gets ready to unleash total chaos on Equestria, cue the happy ending tune.
      • The Season 2 finale gives us Twilight Sparkle, emotionally crushed, allows her a split-second Hope Spot — and then, to all appearances, banished to the Underworld in a circle of green hellfire. Cue "Doot doo doo doot doo, Myyyy Little Pony". If they hadn't shown the two parts back to back, the bronies would have rioted.
      • The first part of the Season 4 two-parter finale ends with Twilight learning that Discord has joined forces with Tirek, and all of the princesses need to get rid of their magic, otherwise he'll steal it and rule everything. Cue the upbeat credit music!
      • Once again, in the first Part of the Season 5 premiere, Starlight Glimmer strips the Mane Six of their cutie marks and viciously tells them they're going to spend the rest of their lives without them. Cue happy credit music.
      • In the Season 5 finale, thanks to Starlight Glimmer, Twilight and Spike find themselves in a base camp of rebels in a Bad Future where Queen Chrysalis and the Changelings have conquered Equestria. The rebels surround Twilight and Spike with spears pointed, believing them to be Changelings and threatening to kill them. Twilight Gulps. Cue up that cheerful My Little Pony theme song, folks!
    • Done in-story when Twilight Sparkle realizes her "friends" aren't interested in helping her stop the Big Bad.
    Twilight: (dejected) I never thought it would happen. My friends...
    (pause)
    Twilight: (angry) ...have turned into COMPLETE JERKS!
    • Near the end of Episode 17, we go from the Cutie Mark Crusaders playing around in the woods to Fluttershy finding Twilight turned to stone. It gets even more horrifying a few moments later when we see a snail crawling slimily across the surface of Twilight's petrified eyeball.
      • This becomes more And-I-Must-Scream-worthy when taken into consideration that petrified characters are still cognizant of their surroundings.
    • In "Owl's Well That Ends Well", the transition from Twilight gently praising Spike as he sleeps to angrily confronting him about her burnt astronomy book is very sudden and shocking.
    • The song "Becoming Popular (The Pony Everypony Should Know)" from the episode "Sweet and Elite" is a very upbeat tune about Rarity's happiness at being accepted into high society... until the last bit, when it suddenly turns very somber and somewhat saddening as she realises she is just too exhausted to complete her friend's birthday dress in time.
    • Something similar happens in "Pinkie Pride". Cheese Sandwich's "I Am" Song, which is every bit as silly and upbeat as you'd expect a character voiced by "Weird Al" Yankovic to sing, ends on an incredibly solemn note as the viewpoint shifts to Pinkie Pie feeling depressed and unwanted. A bit later, she sings a sad song which shifts to happy at the end. And the Goof-off is quite funny, until Pinkie realizes she's not making Rainbow Dash happy. That's three Mood Whiplashes in three different songs in one and the same episode.
    • The episode "Baby Cakes". One somewhat short scene in the second half of it could be considered a shout out to horror movies in general, what with creepy children laughter and SOMETHING CRAWLING ON THE CEILING!note  Oh, did I mention the plot is Pinkie Pie babysitting children?
    • A Mood Rollercoaster in "Twilight's Kingdom Part 2"— between scenes of Tirek conquering Canterlot, then heading to Ponyville to drain Twilight's friends of their magic and invoking You Have Outlived Your Usefulness on Discord, we're treated to mostly comical scenes of Twilight trying to get her new powers under control and botching her spells.
  • Morality Kitchen Sink: The show features characters from all over the moral spectrum, where the absolute majority fall within the grey middle-zone. In the case of the heroes or "good guys" in general, this is usually facilitated by Mr. Vice Guy, and most of the villains are Not Evil, Just Misunderstood.
  • Moral Myopia:
    • Discord is a Reality Warper who turns Equestria into a World Gone Mad, brutally breaks and brainwashes the main characters, drives everyone insane, and generally does whatever he wants to For the Evulz with no remorse or sense of morality... and yet prior to leading the main cast in a trap via a maze, he calls Princess Celestia out for turning him to stone for doing the previously mentioned things.
    • In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 2", Tirek still shows signs of being bitter with his brother for betraying him, despite the fact Scorpan had already tried reasoning with Tirek to stop him, but has zero problems stabbing Discord in the back for his own selfish hunger for power.
  • More Insulting than Intended: In "Newbie Dash", Rainbow Dash finally achieves her lifelong dream of becoming a Wonderbolt. However, she crashes during an early practice, causing the other Bolts to nickname her "Rainbow Crash". Dash finds this horribly offensive because it was the nickname her childhood bullies gave her. Only finding out that all the Wonderbolts have Embarrassing Nicknames allows her to overcome her hurt.
  • Motion Parallax: The animation is not done in traditional cels but rendered by an old version of Adobe Flash. Yet, it's still capable of being programmed to generate motion parallax and other non-CG 3D effects that prevent the middle- and backgrounds from looking flat.
  • Motor Mouth: Pinkie Pie, full stop. She even needs to stop for air before continuing with her verbal tsunami.
    • Apple Bloom as well, during "Call of the Cutie". She inhaled before releasing her own verbal tsunamis, though.
    • Fluttershy can turn into one of these under the right circumstances (such as when first meeting Spike and when critiquing her first gala dress).
  • The Movie: My Little Pony: Equestria Girls and its sequel, which were initially marketed as Direct to Video/cable but got limited theatrical runs beforehand, as well as an outright theatrical film released in 2017.
  • Moving Angst: Inverted and played straight in "The Last Problem" during a flashback. Twilight and the rest of the Mane Six sob their eyes out because Twilight's become the queen of Canterlot and this means she has to move away. They all fear that they may grow apart as friends. Of course, they still keep in touch afterwards.
  • Mr. Vice Guy: This trope applies to each one of the Mane Six to varying degrees, as well as to almost all other primarily "good" characters:
    • Rainbow Dash is brash, insensitive, prideful, and suffers from a fairly severe case of I Just Want to Be Badass. However, she is an extremely loyal friend and a rather good jester.
    • Rarity is vain, superficial, and likes attention far too much. She suffers from I Just Want to Be Beautiful, but in spite of this is actually very considerate and generous (sometimes to the point of self-sacrifice), therefore managing to lampshade that True Beauty Is on the Inside.
    • Twilight Sparkle has No Social Skills, is extremely logical, and has an obsession with control; so much so that any chaotic situation is almost guaranteed to give her a Heroic BSoD. But even so, she is a highly intelligent and kind natured character that nearly always puts her focus on good intentions, making her an efficient leader.
    • Pinkie Pie is extremely friendly, upbeat and willing to befriend anyone. A bit too much however, since she's also more than a bit hyperactive, having No Sense of Personal Space and sometimes too excitable to listen to others or understand their feelings.
    • Fluttershy is gentle and compassionate, but also extremely shy and even cowardly by default. The exception to this is when she is faced with fearsome creatures, to whom she almost invariably relates to with compassion instead of fear. When she tries to be assertive, she sometimes loses control of her normally suppressed agression, turning her into an outright jerk.
    • Lastly Applejack, who is an honest, hardworking pony who everybody knows they can count on... and she can be excessively stubborn to ask for help, and too prideful to admit to her own shortcomings.
    • A recurring theme in the show is the way the different "elements of harmony" virtues of the ponies in the Mane Six counteract a respective vice of another pony in the group. A common pattern for several episodes goes roughly like this:
      1. Pony A's vice X causes pony A and/or others to get into a heap of trouble.
      2. Pony B, whose element of harmony Y is pretty much the exact opposite of pony A's vice X helps pony A understand the error of her ways.
      3. Pony A and B, sometimes aided by the rest of the Mane Six or all of Ponyville or Equestria work together to set things right again.
    • Princess Celestia and to a lesser degree Cadance go against this trend by consistently coming across as Purity Personified, but they are just about the only exceptions.
  • Muggles: Earth ponies; they neither have the magical ability of unicorns, nor the flying ability of pegasi. They are said to be stronger and tougher than other ponies, though, and Word of God says they have a "special connection" to the land in the form of botanical magic and charisma towards animals.
    • Confirmed in "Hearth's Warming Eve"; they are the best farmers, although the other two races are completely willing to try to live without them, and plants can still grow without earth pony aid.
      • "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 1" confirms beyond a shadow of a doubt that the Earth ponies are naturally stronger due to their inherent magic, and can tend the land so well because of it.
  • Multi-Part Episode: Every season's premiere episode (sans the seventh's) is a two-parter, as well as all season finales (sans the third's):
  • Multiple Endings:
    • Hasbro's Web Game Rarity has three different endings, all of which involve the player's pony hanging out with the Mane Six.
    • Two episodes have had online polls prior to their premieres, each listing three endings to the episode and inviting the reader to guess which one is Canon:
  • Multiple Head Case: The Hydra from "Feeling Pinkie Keen".
  • Mundane Utility:
    • All unicorns can use their magic for simple telekinesis, which effectively gives them an extra pair of hands. This is especially useful since ponies don't have hands. This makes tasks like turning pages, writing letters, and eating sandwiches much easier for them than they are for other ponies. Twilight Sparkle in particular can learn any magical spell, and of course, being the universe this is, a lot of what she has learned is mundane utility spells. That doesn't stop her from being a one-pony magical arsenal of destruction as well, though.
    • Pegasi can also use their wings to hold light things underarm. Rainbow Dash once held a ball with her wing this way, and in "Putting Your Hoof Down" Fluttershy even demonstrated feather-based dexterity comparable to that of human fingers (justified a few episodes earlier, where an X-ray shows that pegasi have small bones in the largest of their "feathers").
      • Scootaloo, a pegasus too young to fly properly, uses her wings to give herself extra speed when on her scooter, rather like a propeller. She also uses this to get some sweet air to pull off tricks.
    • Not to mention that, as of "Lesson Zero", Rainbow Dash has apparently managed to master the Sonic Rainboom to the point of using it in demolition.
    • Spike's magic fire breath essentially makes him a living fax machine. Oh, and he can bake cupcakes too.
    • Fluttershy's Stare, which seems to break the will of any creature on the receiving end of it - up to and including full-grown dragons - has been used to round up disobedient chickens and get her pet bunny, Angel, to eat his vegetables.
    • "Inspiration Manifestation": Unicorn magic is great for puppeteering.
  • Muscles Are Meaningless: All the ponies seem to possess strength far beyond their size and figure, from earth ponies pulling a five-compartment train at full speed, to pegasi floating a moving van full of anvils, carts, and pianos.
    • In "A Dog and Pony Show", Rarity (one of the relatively weak unicorns) could pull a cart full of diamonds with ease while three Diamond Dogs could barely move it.
    • In "Dragonshy", a montage of the ponies getting ready to confront a dragon features Applejack's much larger brother Big Macintosh lifting a heavy set of saddle-bags onto her back with great effort. She sags under the sudden weight, but easily straightens up and leaps into the air. This may be meant to imply she's stronger than he is ("strong" is certainly a description associated with her) — but not necessarily, since he does have to lift it with his neck muscles rather than whole body.
      • In "Hearts and Hooves Day", Big Macintosh is shown to be strong enough to tow an entire building, presumably having shorn it clear off its foundation. Likewise, in "Lesson Zero", he was shown to be strong enough to toss an entire mob of ponies—most of the town, in fact—off of him with just a shake of his frame. Despite being under the influence of magic in both cases, it's clear that, as strong as Applejack is, her brother is stronger still.
      • On the other hoof, Big Macintosh had really big trouble carrying a... cake. And it wasn't only about balance - he was sweating heavily as if it was an enormous effort.
    • Slight inconsistency about this is shown in that Twilight Sparkle can't move a plough without magic (unlike the larger stallions), but can carry around a rock several times her volume.
      • This may be a case of Fridge Brilliance considering that the plow was designed for use by earth ponies who are physically stronger and the rock was designed by Discord to be exactly heavy enough to slow Rarity to a crawl without completely incapacitating her. Since Rarity and Twilight are both unicorn ponies, it can be assumed that they are of comparable strength.
    • Partly Truth in Television. Ponies are known for possessing the ability to carry quite heavy loads, even those that match their body weight.
    • Averted at the same time. Big Macintosh is actually extremely strong, as shown in "Lesson Zero" when he launches pretty much everyone in Ponyville off of himself to get at the Smarty Pants doll.
  • Musical Episode:
  • Mustache Vandalism: In "One Bad Apple", Babs Seed does this to the Cutie Mark Crusaders during the musical portion of the episode.
  • My God, What Have I Done?:
    • In the episode "Lesson Zero", Twilight Sparkle has this reaction after her insane attempt to create a friendship problem via an Apple of Discord goes horribly, horribly, right.
    • In "Sisterhooves Social", Rarity totally loses it with her sister after an entire day of getting on one another's nerves (including when Sweetie Belle makes a picture out of the rare gems Rarity had been saving for a dress for an important client), resulting in a huge argument which makes both swear that they wished they were only children and storming off. Later on she's tidying up and looks at the picture again, shown for the first time to be a picture of the two nuzzling inside a shining blue heart. Rarity’s reaction is almost word for word.
    • She sings "what have I done" in "Rarity Takes Manehattan", when her friends don't show up for her fashion show and she thinks she has alienated them. They actually just overslept because they were exhausted from helping her sew new dresses the night before.
    • "Secret of My Excess": Spike doesn't come right out and say it, but the emotion is conveyed by his reaction to seeing Ponyville devastated, and his own giant footprints.
    • Happens in "Hearth's Warming Eve" when Clover the Clever (Twilight), Smart Cookie (Applejack), and Private Pansy (Fluttershy) discover that the blizzard that destroyed their homeland and is now threatening Equestria is caused by Windigos, winter spirits that have been feeding off of the hatred between the three tribes of ponies, meaning their pointless hatred for one another was the cause of everything that had happened.
    • In "Baby Cakes", despite being only a month old, the Cake Twins are smart enough to realize they've gone too far when they see Pinkie bawling.
    • The entire town of Ponyville gets one in "The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000", when their support of the Flim Flam brothers almost causes the Apple family to lose their entire livelihood.
    • Fluttershy gets one in "Putting Your Hoof Down" after being a huge bitch to Pinkie Pie and Rarity, due to taking her assertiveness lessons from Iron Will.
    • Twilight has one in "A Canterlot Wedding" when everyone calls her out on calling Cadance evil. The twist is that it wasn't really Cadance at all, but an imposter posing as her.
      • Thus, when she reveals that the first Cadance she met is an impostor by helping the real Cadance escape, everyone else has this when they realize she was right. The impostor, the changeling queen Chrysalis, rubs into their faces that if they had just listened to Twilight, she could have been stopped. Applejack goes to apologize to Twilight during the Near-Villain Victory, but the latter brushes it off and doesn't hold against them, stating that Chrysalis had fooled everyone and that it wasn't their fault.
    • The Cutie Mark Crusaders, fed up with Babs Seed bullying them to impress resident bitches Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon, set her up for a humiliating fall. Then they learn from Applejack that she's being bullied herself back in Manehattan.
      All three: WHAT'VE WE DONE!?
    • Discord of all people has one of these moments in his returning episode when he realizes that Fluttershy, the only pony to have shown faith and trust in his rehabilitation, takes his jokes and her patience too far when he floods Apple Acres.
    • Twilight says "What have I done?" in "Magical Mystery Cure" after discovering that her careless use of magic has ruined her friends' lives and made all of Ponyville miserable, and she doesn't know how to undo it.
    • In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 2", Discord is obviously having second thoughts during his team-up with Tirek. But this trope doesn't hit him completely until Tirek, unsurprisingly, betrays him and takes his power, just like he did to Fluttershy.
  • My Significance Sense Is Tingling:
    • In "Feeling Pinkie Keen", Pinkie Pie is shown to have nervous twitches just before something significant (and often damaging) is about to happen. She refers to this as her "Pinkie Sense". It has subsequently appeared in "The Mysterious Mare-Do-Well", "It's About Time", and "Princess Twilight Sparkle, Part 1".
    • In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 1", Discord is tasked with tracking down Tirek because he has the ability to sense the magical disruptions that come with Tirek draining a pony.
    • In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 2", Discord visibly wobbles when he senses the imbalance caused by Cadance, Luna, and Celestia transferring their powers to Twilight, but tells no one.
      Discord: That can't be right.
      Tirek: What can't be right?
      Discord: Nothing. Carry on!
  • Myth Arc:
    • Season 1 has the ponies preparing for the Grand Galloping Gala.
    • Season 4 has finding the keys for the box sprouted by the Tree of Harmony, and secondarily preparing for the Equestria Games.
    • Season 5 has following the map's various missions, alongside Starlight Glimmer preparing her revenge.
    • Season 9 has Grogar assembling the remaining villains, sending them out on missions and preparing to take over Equestria.
  • Mythology Gag: See the Shout Outs page for the full list.
  • Mythopoeia: Friendship is Magic had a slowly-growing body of myths and history connected to it, including the story of Nightmare Moon in the pilot, Discord's background from the start of Season 2, and the founding of Equestria from Hearth's Warming Eve and the iOS app Twilight Sparkle: Teacher for a Day & its Ruckus Reader version Twilight Sparkle's Special Lesson.

    N 
  • National Animal Stereotypes: Zecora the zebra is an African Witch Doctor and the bison tribe are Native Americans.
  • Name-Meaning Change: In "Bloom and Gloom", it was noted when a Cutie Mark Crusader got their cutie mark, they technically wouldn’t be a Cutie Mark Crusader anymore. However, this turns out to be a non-issue when they actually receive their cutie marks, as it's revealed their special talents are cutie marks. So they’re still the Cutie Mark Crusaders, but instead of crusading to find theirs, they’re crusading to find and help others understand their cutie marks.
  • Near-Villain Victory:
    • It happened in the very first episode of the very first Season. Nightmare Moon popped up, carried out her plan, removed her sister, set her traps, destroyed the Elements of Harmony... except that last step turned out to have failed.
    • Happens in "The Return Of Harmony". Discord has emotionally broken and Mind Raped five of the Mane Cast already to the point the Elements Of Harmony — the only magic that can defeat him — are useless, and driven Twilight Sparkle across the Despair Event Horizon, completely shattering the Mane Cast's friendship. With the heroes crushed and beaten, Discord takes over Equestria, transforming it into a surreal World Gone Mad that's growing more chaotic by the moment, with Ponyville as his new "chaos capital of the world". However, his victory is snatched away from his grasp when Celestia sends Twilight all the letters her student had sent her over the previous season, which restores Twilight's hope and motivates her to restore her friends to normal. Reunited, the group confronts Discord; his own pride and belief the Elements of Harmony won't work causes him not to realize this until it's too late. Discord is sealed away and a World-Healing Wave created by the Elements of Harmony restores Equestria to normal.
    • Happens again in the Season 2 finale. The Changeling Queen has destroyed the barrier protecting Canterlot, unleashed her hordes upon the city to feed off the love of all the ponies, and has even defeated Celestia in a straight-up fight by tapping into Shining Armor's love for Cadance. Even worse, the Mane 6 fail to reach the Elements of Harmony in time, and are captured by the thousands of changelings that now storm the city. Unfortunately for the queen, she forgot that Cadance and Shining Armor are still in the room, and that Cadance's magic is the ability to make ponies love each other. The result is Shining Armor getting a massive injection of the Power of Love, which gives him enough power to reset the barrier and blast all of the changelings out of Canterlot once and for all.
    • The Season 3 opening two-parter also has this happen, with a twist. King Sombra's near victory is the result of his actions taken before the story even starts. Cadance's magic gives out, causing the barrier keeping Sombra locked out to fail and Sombra himself to enter the Crystal Empire. Twilight ends up trapped by a crystal barrier, which also begins to corrupt the Empire from the inside and prevents her from getting the Crystal Heart where it needs to be to defeat Sombra. Spike manages to get the Crystal Heart and tries to get it to where it can defeat Sombra, but Sombra attacks, coming within a few inches of capturing or possibly killing him before Shining Armor throws Cadance like a javelin to catch Spike and the Heart, allowing them to power it up and kill King Sombra.
    • In "Twilight’s Kingdom, Part 2", Tirek claiming that having absorbed Discord's magic and all the magic Twilight had been carrying with her means he had technically won. There wasn't a creature alive in Equestria with enough magic to constrain him at that point. So the team has to tap into an 11th-Hour Superpower to break through.
    • In "The Cutie Re-Mark, Part 2", Starlight Glimmer constantly thwarts Twilight's attempts to stop her from preventing Rainbow Dash's first Sonic Rainboom and thus resorts to taking a third option by showing her the damage she's causing. When Starlight thinks Twilight is still bluffing and attempts to destroy the time travel spell that set this all off, Twilight gives Starlight the one thing she's wanted all along - a friend.
  • Negative Continuity: Not much, but Ponyville has been completely rebuilt from a smoking ruin between episodes several times. Perhaps they just have good insurance? Seasons also tend to change depending on the story; the worst instance of this is the Season 1 episode "Winter Wrap Up", where the ponies clean up winter to prepare for the coming spring. A mere two episodes later in "Fall Weather Friends", it's autumn and they're helping the leaves fall from the trees. A lesser example occurs between Equestria Girls and Season 4; the film is holding the Fall Formal while Season 4 opens with the Summer Sun Celebration, implying a year has passed between the two. However, given the "Reflections" arc in the comic takes place during the same timeframe, this may actually be the case.
  • Never-Forgotten Skill: Cutie Marks represent a pony's special talent and destiny, implying that a pony can never forget the skills associated with that talent. "Magical Mystery Cure" confirms this. First, by showing that when five ponies get their Cutie Marks switched, they try to do what the Cutie Mark represents, but they fail miserable. Finally, by showing that when Twilight gets them to remember what they are good at, they get their Cutie Marks back where they should be, and that their skills remain the same regardless of what Cutie Mark they have.
  • Never Say "Die": The series most often substitutes "kill" with "destroy" whenever a character is making a threat. Beyond that, Pinkie Pie's swear from "Green Isn't Your Color" starts with "Cross my heart and hope to fly...". It's worth noting, though, that death isn't a completely taboo subject for the show - in another episode, Twilight vows to find a way to help with the Winter Wrap Up "even if it kills me".
    • After losing her last feather, Philomena gasps, collapses limply, gasps once more, drops for seven seconds off a tall statue, spontaneously combusts and ends up as a heap of dust in Fluttershy's hooves. Twilight's summary? "There's been a terrible accident." Philomena's The Phoenix, of course, so she's fine in the end, but even Princess Celestia avoids mentioning the classic death-and-rebirth thing. Apparently a Pony phoenix renews itself by "shedding all of its feathers and bursting into flame". Which is totally not dying. Princess Celestia even calls it "playing a trick", implying the bird is doing it on her own free will.
    • Averted in, of all things, Rarity's dressmaking song from "Suited For Success": "Hook and eye, couldn't you just simply die?".
    • Also averted in "Return of Harmony, Part 2": After Twilight and co. fail using the Elements of Harmony for the first time, Discord says that "harmony in Equestria is officially dead".
    • From way back in "Applebuck Season": "AJ, I think you're beating a dead... tree."
    • In "The Cutie Pox", when a large group of ponies are running in fear from the Cutie Pox-afflicted Apple Bloom, it sounds like somebody says "She's going to kill me!".
    • What happens to the three Windigoes when they get consumed by the flame and are never seen again in "Hearth's Warming Eve"? Sure, we hear one at the end of the episode, but it could just be another of their species.
    • In "Hearts and Hooves Day" the Cutie Mark Crusaders have a song sequence in which they criticize various stallions on why they can't be paired with Cheerilee. The point out an elderly pony (Mr. Waddle) as being too old. What was this old pony doing? He's a pastor giving the eulogy at a funeral. There's clearly a closed casket next to him.
    • And there's the fate of King Sombra...
    • It was confirmed in a twitter post that while they could never get away with saying it in this show, Applejack's parents have indeed passed away, and the pair of shooting stars at the end of "Apple Family Reunion" were meant to represent them.
      • They finally get around this in "Crusaders of the Lost Mark" by referencing it indirectly, having Applejack tell Apple Bloom "If Mom and Dad were here, they'd be so proud of you."
      • "The Perfect Pear" downplays this. In all but exact words, this episode confirms that Bright Mac and Buttercup/Pear Butter are dead. Several characters tear up when reminiscing about Bright Mac and Pear Butter, and Apple Bloom even comments that their parents left them the rock and intertwined trees to "remember them by".
    • Oddly inverted in the Japanese dub of the pilot - while originally Applejack promises that Twilight will "be safe" if she lets go of her hoof and takes a seemingly fatal plunge, here she says that Twilight "won't die".
  • Never Trust a Trailer: A commercial for Season 3 showed Pinkie Pie making a face similar to a G3 My Little Pony to Fluttershy and Rarity, and the two react in disgust. In the actual episode, it was a clone of Pinkie making the face to another clone of Pinkie.
  • New Baby Episode:
    • In "Baby Cakes", Mr. and Mrs. Cake have twins, named Pound (colt) and Pumpkin (filly). Pinkie Pie tries to babysit them, but finds them a handful with their powers, chewing on things, diapers, etc. It turns out to be worth it in the end, though, when they say their first words: her name.
    • In "The Crystalling", Shining Armour and Princess Cadance have their baby, but she's an Alicorn and has uncontrollable powers that eventually break an artifact that's needed to prevent blizzards.
  • New Game Plus: Completing Adventures in Ponyville once lets you play as a pegasus. Completing it twice lets you play as a unicorn.
  • New Powers as the Plot Demands: By and large averted; recurring characters' abilities remain fairly consistent (though a measure of Strong as They Need to Be applies), and the occasional appearance of new ones is generally justified.
    • For example, Twilight Sparkle as the most obvious suspect isn't just a magical prodigy, she's also a studious bookworm who keeps practicing new tricks in her free time; even so she has clear power limits, has yet to demonstrate any ability to invent entirely new spells from scratch herself, and sometimes the ones she has and thinks of using end up just plain not quite working as intended anyway.
    • Rainbow Dash is likewise an athlete spending at least part of her time coming up with new stunts to her repertoire.
    • Trixie's massive power boost between the first two episodes in which she's appeared is due to the Alicorn Amulet; without it, she's back to her old self.
    • Pinkie Pie, of course, keeps running on the Rule of Funny, which is a form of consistency in its own right.
  • New York Is Only Manhattan: Exaggerated. The Fantasy Counterpart Culture of NYC is simply called Manehattan, ignoring everything else in the city.
  • Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
    • In the episode "Swarm of the Century", Twilight Sparkle uses her magic powers to stop a swarm of locust-like Parasprites from eating all the food in town. It works; the Parasprites stop eating food and go after everything else.
    • In "Sonic Rainboom", Rarity's mission to provide moral support for Rainbow Dash suddenly turns into Rarity's runaway ego trip that only hastens Dash's collapse into a quivering nervous wreck.
    • In "Over a Barrel", Pinkie Pie tries to settle a territory dispute between settlers and the native buffalo herd by singing about sharing. The sheriff and the buffalo chief finally come to an agreement... that it was the worst performance they'd ever seen. When the buffalo are on the verge of backing down from their threat of a stampede, Pinkie Pie's ill-timed reprisal of the song triggers the chief's Berserk Button.
    • Rainbow Dash's advice to Apple Bloom to try as many different things as rapidly as possible in order to find her Cutie Mark got carried over to the Cutie Mark Crusaders. Perhaps if they weren't constantly changing plans they might succeed.
    • The mane ponies' efforts to have the reality of the Gala meet their expectations in "The Best Night Ever" end up wreaking havoc at the Gala itself. It turns out Princess Celestia had hoped this would happen in order to bring some life to the event.
    • In "The Return of Harmony, Part 1", the fight between the Cutie Mark Crusaders may have caused Discord to wake and escape his weakened prison. In the second part of the two-parter episode, Twilight's guess that Discord's riddle meant the Elements Of Harmony were in the maze was wrong and because of her not thinking the riddle out more carefully, her friends were broken and Mind Raped by Discord for nothing. What's worse, Discord takes great pleasure in rubbing it in her face.
    • Twilight breaks herself in "It's About Time". A battered and broken Twilight from the future appears briefly in the library and tries (unsuccessfully) to warn her past self about some oncoming disaster to take place between now and "next Tuesday morning". Present Twilight misses the important part of the message and immediately freaks out, spending all of her time trying to deduce what's about to happen and, if at all possible, prevent it... but nothing really bad actually happens. Twilight finds a spell to go back in time, and tries to warn her past self not to panic — but in failing to deliver the message, causes her past self to panic.
    • This happens again in the Season 2 finale "A Canterlot Wedding". Seeing the very questionable actions of Princess Cadance leads Twilight to believe that she has somehow become evil and tries to warn everyone about what she's learned. This makes her come off as rather crazy and her friends end up shunning her, including Celestia. Surprise! Cadance is evil, but it's actually the Changeling Queen impersonating her, using her love for Twilight's brother, Shining Armor, to fuel her power. By the time Twilight and the real Princess Cadance arrive to stop her, the Queen already became too strong for even Celestia to handle. She even points out that they could have stopped her sooner if they all had listened to Twilight in the first place, although as Twilight herself points out a moment later, her disguise would have fooled everybody anyway. It was only because the real Cadance was Twilight's fillyhood friend that she grew suspicious of Chrysalis!Cadance to begin with, and even then she only realized the truth after the real Cadance informed her that the latter was a fake.
    • Twilight Sparkle pulls practically the exact same blunder she did with the Parasprites again in "Bats!" She tries a spell that will change the vampire fruit bat's tastes so they don't like apples and it works... with the side-effect of transforming Fluttershy into a vampire fruit pony with an even bigger appetite than all the bats combined.
    • In "Equestria Games" the Power Nullifier to prevent cheating from the unicorns prevents them from doing anything to stop the giant ice cloud as it plummets toward the stadium.
    • In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 2", Celestia's tradition of showing off the heroes of Equestria (notably, Princess Twilight's ascension) in the stained glass windows of the royal halls comes back to ruin her plan to keep knowledge of Twilight secret from Tirek. He probably would have found out anyway, but still. Discord puts his own spin on the most of the windows in the palace, but forgets to do that specific one, or at least hadn't gotten to it by the time Tirek noticed.
  • Nice Job Fixing It, Villain:
    • In the Season 2 finale, Twilight Sparkle calls out Princess Cadance and calls her evil, which nets her a royal "The Reason You Suck" Speech from her brother, all her friends turn on her, and even Princess Celestia is disappointed in her. Twilight herself is ashamed of her behavior and apologizes. Of course, had "Cadance" who is really Queen Chrysalis in disguise just left it at that she would have won. Unfortunately that just wasn't evil enough; instead she banishes Twilight to the caves below Canterlot where she meets the real Cadance, rescues her, and brings her topside to thwart the entire masquerade.
    • In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 2", if Tirek had stuck to his word to Discord, he wouldn't have given the Mane 6 the final key needed to beat him. Of course Tirek had no way of knowing it'd backfire at the time.
    • In "Shadow Play - Part 1", the Mane Six find the lost artifacts of Star Swirl the Bearded and the Pillars of Old Equestria, and use them to free them from Limbo after many years of imprisonment and Twilight finally gets to meet her idol. However, they realize too late that doing such also releases the Pony of Shadows, an Eldritch Abomination who was imprisoned along with them and the reason behind the Pillars' sacrifice, and Equestria is in for a realm of shadowy chaos.
  • Night and Day Duo: Princesses Celestia and Luna have domain over day and night, respectively. Celestia is white with a sun cutie-mark, a pastel mane and tail, and in addition to raising the sun, she has massive amounts of magical energy. Princess Luna is dark blue with a moon cutie-mark, a sparkly blue mane and tail, and in addition to raising the moon, she has Dream Walker abilities. This contrast is what led to the conflict in the pilot; Princess Luna, feeling underappreciated because ponies enjoyed the morning but slept through the night, became Nightmare Moon and attempted to take over the world with eternal night. After being banished to the moon for a thousand years and then defeated by the Mane Six, she and Celestia made up and agreed to rule together.
  • Nightmare Face:
  • Nobody Poops: Downplayed — excretion itself isn't mentioned, but in "Winter Wrap Up" Spike compares Twilight's bird nest to an outhouse.
    • In "Fall Weather Friends", Rainbow Dash uses the term "horse apples" in the same sense that primates would use comparable terms. (Horse apples actually do exist; they are a type of inedible fruit.)
      • This may actually be an example of a Stealth Pun, besides the obvious euphemism, "road apple" is a colloquial term for horse manure.
      • "Horse apples" has precedence as a term for "horse manure"; it's used that way in The Shawshank Redemption.
    • In "The Cutie Pox", Twilight mentions "the trots" as she looks through a books of pony ailments.
    • In "Sweet and Elite", one of Rarity's excuses for switching parties is that she needs to go to the "little fillies' room".
    • Averted in "Baby Cakes", as we have two moments in the episode where the babies have to be changed, and it's clear from the green stench what the reason for the changing is.
    • And again in "The Last Roundup", which shows Pinkie in desperate need of a bathroom and depicts the show's first on-camera outhouse (though we don't see inside it).
  • No Celebrities Were Harmed:
  • No Indoor Voice: Princess Luna in "Luna Eclipsed". Played for Laughs and cranked up to eleven in that, whenever she speaks, it's accompanied by a visual "shout" coming from her mouth and an ominous echo.
    • Bulk Biceps.
  • Non-Indicative First Episode: First two episodes, actually. They're heavily Magical Girl-influenced High Fantasy adventures about preventing the apocalypse, while the rest of the show is mostly slice of life with a little magic thrown in.
  • Non-Standard Kiss: The show uses nuzzling in place of kissing.
  • Non-Voyage Party: In "Party of One", Pinkie misapprehends the other ponies blowing off her after-birthday party for Gummy and after seeing them sneak around, avoid her, and give her obvious, feeble lies to explain why they can't come to Gummy's afterparty, jumps to the conclusion that they no longer want to be her friends. This upsets her greatly, and she's surprised when her friends explain that the truth is they were throwing her a surprise birthday party.
  • No Ontological Inertia:
    • In "Secret of My Excess", Spike's greed causes him to progressively grow into a larger dragon over the course of the episode, until by the end he is a rampaging dragon the size of a small mountain. When he realizes that he was wrong to be so greedy, Spike, immediately, and magically, poofs back to his original size.
    • Subverted twice in "Inspiration Manifestation"; Spike tries to invoke this by eating the spellbook. This accomplishes nothing, as Rarity retains her powers and corrupted behavior. It takes a Curse Escape Clause to set Rarity right again.
      • Even after the book is destroyed and the spell breaks, the changes to Ponyville still remain. It takes three princesses all day to reverse everything.
  • No OSHA Compliance: Cloudsdale not having any railings seems reasonable, considering only pegasi live there. However, if Scootaloo and Fluttershy are any indication, flying is something that is not learned until significantly later than they learn how to walk, making Cloudsdale a deathtrap for young pegasi.
    • Twilight Sparkle's bedroom was a second-story loft with no railing around it.
    • In "The Mysterious Mare-Do-Well", Ponyville itself is shown not to be up to snuff with regard to safety procedures, with multiple roads on steep hills and no railings.
  • No-Sell:
    • Fluttershy in "Stare Master". She is being turned to stone by a cockatrice and one might expect her to have some clever solution to the situation, as is typical with such stories. Instead, she just ignores it and stares the creature down and lectures it until it's intimidated into stopping and breaking the enchantment on her. In a similar vein, "The Return of Harmony" shows that Fluttershy is the only one of the Mane Six who's immune to Discord's verbal manipulation. Granted, he finally just gives up and uses straight-up mind control instead.
    • "Keep Calm and Flutter On" reverses it. Fluttershy uses The Stare on Discord (the same one she used to cow a dragon into submission); Discord pretends to be scared, then laughs at Fluttershy for thinking her Stare could affect him. By the end of the episode both being immune to overt manipulation by the other forms the basis of a lasting friendship and his redemption.
    • As the superhero Saddle Rager in "Power Ponies", Fluttershy's super-powered mode gets a full blast of the Mane-iac's doomsday weapon, and the beam bounces off harmlessly.
    • In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 2", until she voluntarily surrenders it, Tirek is unable to drain Twilight of the combined power of the Princesses' alicorn magic. Though likewise Tirek shrugs off everything Twilight throw at him. Tirek's magic also does absolutely nothing to the rainbow-powered Mane Six.
  • Not My Lucky Day: Whichever character is having A Day in the Limelight, expect them to go through a grand-scale Humiliation Conga concerning one of their shortcomings or oversights. Even outside of this, nearly all of the mane characters have notable Butt-Monkey moments.
  • Not So Above It All: Despite being rulers of Equestria who control the Sun and Moon respectfully, Princess Celestia and Princess Luna eat, sleep, play, and argue like any other pony, especially if the plot demands it. For examples, see "A Royal Problem" and "Between Dark and Dawn".
  • Not the Fall That Kills You…: Twilight Sparkle falls for quite a while before Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy grab her in mid-air, without any damage, in Part 2 of the pilot.
    • Ignored in "Applebuck Season", when a falling Applejack repeatedly fails to hit the other end of Rainbow Dash's seesaw with no lasting injuries. This is despite even landing throat-first on the fourth attempt.
    • In "Sonic Rainboom" Rarity falls for 50 seconds, which in Earth's gravity and air resistance would be at least a mile. Rainbow Dash accelerates to Mach 1, straight down, before catching her and making an instant 90-degree turn.
    • In "The Cutie Mark Chronicles", after falling from a cloud high in the sky, a young Fluttershy is saved by a swarm of butterflies, just a couple feet above the ground.
      • Considering the other attributes applied to pegasi (walking on clouds, ability to create and change weather, pulling carts and such, etc.) it's possible that they project magic into things that they touch, allowing them to save falling ponies or land on clouds (or clouds of butterflies) without harm.
    • And now it happens yet again in "Secret of My Excess", with Dash and Fluttershy rescuing a falling Rarity and Spike with a torn part of a dress.
    • "Wonderbolts Academy" sees Rainbow Dash's friends fall quite a distance onto a quickly improvised and apparently extra-dense cloud, bounce right back up, and be caught by assorted pegasi physically no worse for wear.
  • Nothing Is the Same Anymore:
    • By the end of the third season, Rainbow Dash makes some real progress in her dream of joining the Wonderbolts, Trixie and Discord are reformed, and, more importantly, Twilight Sparkle has been coronated a princess and made an alicorn to match that status.
    • In the Season 4 premiere and the following episode, the Mane 6 sacrifice the Elements of Harmony to revive the Tree of Harmony and save Equestria and begin writing in a group Diary kept by Twilight instead of sending letters.
    • "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 2":
      • The Mane Six gain Rainbow Power, and with it, new powers to explore. The library is destroyed, but in its place is a new castle effectively making Ponyville into a kingdom, and Twilight is dubbed "Princess of Friendship".
      • Discord's character also crossed whatever the polar opposite of the Moral Event Horizon is. He fully accepts the Mane Six as his friends and can truly be considered reformed.
    • The Cutie Mark Crusaders finally earn their cutie marks in Season 5 and now find their destiny is to help others find their own place in life.
  • Novelization:
  • Now That's Using Your Teeth!: Completely justified since, as ponies, they have no hands with which to manipulate objects.

    O 
  • Odd Name Out: Most of the ponies have names that describe their cutie marks. But very rarely, a pony gets introduced that has a name an actual person could have. For some reason, this is particularly common with the alicorns.
  • Official Couple:
    • Shining Armor and Cadance.
    • As of Season 7, Sugar Belle and Big Mac.
    • As of Season 8, Mudbriar and Maud Pie.
    • As of Season 9, Clear Sky and Quibble Pants.
      • And Lyra and Bon Bon.
  • Offscreen Moment of Awesome:
    • In "It's About Time", Twilight sets out to return Cerberus(!) to the gates of Tartarus(!!), so that all the evil creatures that are imprisoned there won't break free and destroy Equestria(!!!). And all we get to see is Spike waking up next morning and remarking that Twilight should go on epic adventures more often.
    • In "Inspiration Manifestation", we don't get to see Luna and Cadance join Twilight to restore Ponyville; we only hear Twilight saying that it happened.
  • Offscreen Teleportation: Usually done by Pinkie Pie, but some of the others have used this ability.
    • During her cupcakes song, Pinkie even popped into the foreground while she was still in the background two times.
    • Derpy Hooves goes from bobbin' for apples to appearing in the tub in "Luna Eclipsed".
    • In "Lesson Zero", when Pinkie's rolling with laughter at Twilight's Obsessively Organized tendencies, she's outside the quilt and in front of Twi. When Twilight turns around to talk to Applejack, Pinkie has somehow moved behind AJ and the rest of the Mane Cast, near the opposite edge of the quilt. Not that this is in any way unusual for her...
  • Oh, Crap!: Has its own page.
  • Oh, My Gods!: Has happened several times, in such forms as "Thank Celestia", "In the name of Celestia", and "As Celestia is my witness".
  • Old Shame: In-Universe example; in "Sonic Rainboom", Rarity enters the Best Young Flier Competition with a set of magical wings. She flies too close to the sun, causing her wings to disintegrate. After she knocks out the Wonderbolts during their attempt to rescue her, Rainbow Dash saves them mere inches before they hit the ground. When these events are brought up much later in "Sleepless in Ponyville", Rarity blushes, clearly regretting the scare she caused.
  • Ominous Pipe Organ: The Castle of the Two Sisters' Organ to the Outside, which, in addition to providing scary music, controls various trapdoors around the castle. Once the musician is revealed to be Pinkie Pie, its sound changes to be much less ominous.
  • The One Guy: Spike, and, as of Season 2, occasionally Big Macintosh.
  • Once per Episode: The episodes (particularly in the first Season) usually end with a pony writing a letter to Celestia about the moral of that particular episode. This was usually done by Twilight in the first Season, then expanded to the rest of the Mane Six in the second Season. The third Season moved away from this routine, however, as only a couple of episodes have involved somebody writing Celestia a letter.
  • One-Hour Work Week: Sometimes. How time-consuming the ponies' respective day jobs are portrayed seems to vary per episode. Most often played straight with Pinkie Pie, who's rarely ever seen working at Sugercube Corner (though throwing parties is practically her second job). Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash are rarely seen "on the clock", but the unusual natures of their jobs (micromanaging the local fauna and weather, respectively) let Fluttershy set her own hours and let Rainbow do her job in "ten seconds flat".
    • Averted with Twilight Sparkle (Celestia's student, seen studying more often than not; has also been shown to work as a caretaker and librarian of the library she lives in), Applejack (apple farmer), and Rarity (fashion designer), who are often shown working; in fact, entire episodes have revolved around the latter two's lines of work and one of Applejack's major character flaws is workaholism.
    • Averted with Princess Celestia too, as most of the time when she appears, she's either working, giving out work, off to attend some sort of work-related activity, or generally being diplomatic and working to keep Equestria safe and peaceful. Princess Luna is also seen at work in about half of her appearances, raising the moon, helping the CMC with their nightmares, or engaged in diplomatic duties.
  • One of the Girls: Spike spends most of his time with the all-female Mane Six, holding especially close bonds with Twilight, Fluttershy and Rarity. It isn't until much later in the series that he is shown spending time with other males (and even then, that group consists simply of himself, Big McIntosh and Discord).
  • One of the Kids: The mane characters are mature enough to live independently and have jobs, but frequently act as though they were in their mid-to-late teens. It's interesting though that their "mature" traits mainly concern social relations, while their "childishness" is more present in their immediate behavior. It sort of fits with the life-cycle of actual horses: a foal can walk within minutes of birth, unlike a baby human. Word of God has it that the ponies are at the physical maturity for ponies equivalent to human teenagers, but mentally more advanced than that period, but of course superseded when appropriate.
  • One-Steve Limit: This trope is not merely averted, it's flung down and danced upon. Shared first names are almost too numerous to list:
  • Only Sane Man:
    • This is how Twilight Sparkle feels when she first comes to Ponyville. It doesn't help that the first pony she meets there is Pinkie Pie. More generally, Twilight often (but not always) plays this role in other episodes.
    • Averted for Twilight in "Look Before You Sleep". She goes a bit obsessive to check the list to the point where she has to actually check whether a big tree crashing in her home is part of a sleepover. She also completely loses it when the Parasprites begin to eat the town in "Swarm of the Century"
    • Apple Bloom also qualifies as this in "Bridle Gossip", as she was the only one who didn't jump to conclusions about Zecora after the "curses" occurred.
    • One of the great things about the show is that the characters are multifaceted enough that many of them can take up the Only Sane Mare role depending on the situation. Even Pinkie flirts with this role in "Griffon the Brush-Off".
    • Averted in a larger sense in that, while Twilight is typically the sanest cast member, she does not go around complaining about the quirks of the others. Instead, she tries to fit in.
    • Spike is usually one of the sanest characters; it becomes especially noticeable once Twilight starts acting screwy. Even he has heavily flawed moments and has to be kept in check however (Only Sane Men don't usually have Dastardly Whiplash alter egos).
    • Applejack also plays the more rational character in many episodes, though like Spike and Twilight, still has defining flaws and a good few episodes devoted to her playing up.
    • Owlowiscious is this to Spike in "Inspiration Manifestation", since knows not to use spells from a book hidden in a secret ominous cave.
    • Toola Roola and Coconut Cream in "Fame and Misfortune" were the only readers of the Mane Six's friendship journal who truly understood its lessons and what they meant, which in turn repaired their friendship.
    • Unsurprisingly, the Tree of Harmony in the infamous "The Mean 6", as it was the only one that realized the Mane 6's evil counterparts were not the real ponies, and destroys them in return.
  • Only One Finds It Fun:
    • In "Applebuck Season", Applejack is sleep deprived and makes muffins with potato chips, a "cup of sour" and earthworms due to mishearing Pinkie Pie's instructions. Not only do the ponies hate the muffins, but they all get sick, except Spike, who likes them and doesn't get sick.
    • In "Equestria Games", Pinkie was the only one at the games who enjoyed Spike's poor rendition of the Cloudsdale anthem. Evicenced by her bobbing her head with glee and screaming "NAILED IT!!!" when the song was over.
    • In "The Maud Couple", Maud Pie tries to be a stand-up comedian but only Pinkie Pie finds her jokes funny.
  • Only One Name: Played With. Many ponies only have one name — Fluttershy, Rarity, Applejack, Scootaloo, etc. At other times, characters have family names, most prominently the Cakes, who are Carrot Cake and Cup Cake with children Pound Cake and Pumpkin Cake. Additionally, there are many characters with two-part names, like Rainbow Dash, or Twilight Sparkle, who sometimes have the second part of their names as family names. Then there's Pinkie Pie and her sisters Maud Pie, Limestone Pie and Marble Pie, but their parents are Cloudy Quartz and Igneous Rock, the Apples, who have no common name between them but have apple-related Theme Naming, and sibling pairs like Sweetie Belle and Rarity, or Twilight Sparkle and Shining Armor. In short, Equestria's usage of family names is inconsistent, and sometimes they aren't used at all, so it's hard to judge if ponies with only one name are out of the ordinary.
  • Only Six Faces: Most of the ponies look like any other pony of their sex, race and age group.note  You can usually tell them apart from each other by looking at their hair style and color scheme.
    • Lauren Faust has said that she wanted to include a wider variety of body types, even among the Mane Cast, but decided against it because most of the animators were working overtime as it was, and she didn't want to add to that unnecessarily.
      • Season 2 introduced a bunch of new pony designs into the series, which had led to the bizarre effect of the primary cast of ponies all having identical bodies while the secondary ponies having more varied designs, though the use of the older body types are still prevalent within the show. Subsequent seasons have further increased the variation in body types, but with the originals still predominating.
  • O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
    • "Cutie Mark Failure Insanity Syndrome" shows up for each character in the Mane Cast, with that character's personality changing dramatically in response to outside stress, especially stress related to that character's talent. Seeing the showoff Rainbow Dash suffering from stage fright in "Sonic Rainboom" or the usually steadfast and honest Applejack lying to her friends in "The Last Roundup" is mindboggling. The issue goes to outright terrifying with Pinkie Pie's lapse into depression in "Party of One", Fluttershy's lapse into Yandere at the climax of "The Best Night Ever", and Twilight Sparkle's complete psychotic breakdown in "Lesson Zero".
    • On a much more serious note, Princess Celestia acting nervous and grave when Discord escapes his prison — in contrast to her normal calm and collected, even playful personality — is a big warning sign that Discord is much more dangerous than he looks.
      • In "Lesson Zero", Princess Celestia flies over to Ponyville right after she fulfills her sun-related duties, fixes Twilight's mess, and sternly reprimands her. This is the first time in the series that Princess Celestia has shown any disappointment in Twilight, let alone the outright anger she expresses upon first realizing what had happened.
      Celestia: TWILIGHT SPARKLE!
      Applejack: Whoa, nelly...
    • Fluttershy does this all the time. She is normally extremely fearful, but when her friends are in trouble, she'll stand up to a manticore, a cockatrice, or a giant firebreathing dragon. And if there isn't a threat around, it means trouble for her friends (see "Putting Your Hoof Down" for an example). She's uncharacteristically harsh and snarky when dealing with her slacker brother, Zephyr Breeze in "Flutter Brutter".
    • Big Macintosh, who is normally calm, collected, and quiet, chews out the Cutie Mark Crusaders for printing embarrassing details about him and Applejack in "Ponyville Confidential". You know you really screwed up when you get him mad enough to say more than a few words. Even more, when Big Mac is talking, Applejack, who is just as mad, becomes The Quiet One, resorting to the same "eeyup"s and "nope"s Big Mac is famous for. He also drops his quiet act if he becomes ashamed of himself, most notably in "Brotherhooves Social" where he makes a heartfelt speech to Apple Bloom to explain his actions at the Sisterhooves Social which ended up with the both of them disqualified.
    • In "Keep Calm and Flutter On", when Celestia brings Discord to Ponyville in an attempt to reform him, the Mane Six are furious that she would bring the worst villain they've ever faced anywhere near them, even Twilight — who is usually intensely reverent of Celestia and terrified of disappointing her — outright yelling at her.
      Twilight Sparkle: With all due respect, princess... HOW COULD YOU BRING DISCORD HERE? ...Your majesty."
    • In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 2", when Discord starts acting solemn and serious, you know this time he truly is sorry for what he's done. In the finale for Season 6, he becomes absolutely furious when he finds out the Changelings have kidnapped Fluttershy.
    • In "The Cutie Re-Mark, Part 2", smirking, raging lunatic Starlight Glimmer becomes calm and solemn, accepts responsibility for her actions, and smiles for the first time on screen. It's so out of character for her (at the time), you just know something special is about to happen.
    • Both in "A Canterlot Wedding, Part 2" and "To Where and Back Again, Part 2"; this is what happens when a character has been replaced by a Changeling.
  • Open the Iris/Wide Eyes and Shrunken Irises: Done a lot; it's even the page image for the former. Eyes in this show are impossibly expressive, and changes in both iris and pupil size carry meaning.
  • Order Versus Chaos: Harmony versus Disharmony.
  • Orphaned Etymology: In "It’s About Time", Future!Twilight says she's from "next Tuesday morning". Does that mean that at some point ponies practised Germanic paganism, or is it just a Translation Convention?
  • Our Dragons Are Different: Obviously there's Spike, but "Dragonshy" and "Owl's Well That Ends Well" feature more typical Western dragons. Though he's called a serpent, it's obvious Steven Magnet from the pilot is based off Eastern dragons.
  • Out-of-Character Moment:
    • Each of the Mane Six have experienced this at least once. Was forced in "The Return of Harmony" when Discord corrupted all six.
    • Big Macintosh. His usual vocabulary is just "Eeyup" and "Nope", but in "Ponyville Confidential", he started saying actual full sentences when scolding the Cutie Mark Crusaders, and in "Hearts and Hooves Day" when under the influence of their love poison. Explained (at least partially) later: his way of speaking in "Brotherhooves Social" and "Where the Apple Lies" reveals that he's got a far wider vocabulary and can demonstrate pretty received speech (albeit it leaves the audience wondering where he was educated, considering the contrast with his sisters and grandmother), he just rarely comes to it.
  • Out-of-Context Eavesdropping: In "Party of One", Pinkie Pie overhears everyone else in the Mane Six talking about how they don't want her around. She assumes that they don't want her as a friend anymore, but they're really just throwing her a surprise party.
  • Overly Long Gag:
    • Pinkie Pie's dialogue occasionally delves into this trope.
      Pinkie Pie: Are you excited? Because I'm excited! I've never been so excited! Well, except for the time I saw you walking into town, and I went "Gasp!"!, but I mean really, who could top that?
    • In "Over a Barrel", we have Chief Thunderhooves' rant about his tribe's sacred stampeding trail: "My father stampeded upon these grounds. And his father before him... and his father before him... and his father before him... and his father before him..." Meanwhile, the other tribe members are shown trying to stay awake, and Little Strong Heart eventually has to shut the chief up.
    • Near the end of "A Friend in Deed", Pinkie tries to chase Cranky Doodle Donkey down and tell him that she's "really really really really really really really really [etc.]" sorry for ruining his scrapbook.
    • In "Equestria Games", Spike attempts to make up words for the Cloudsdale anthem since he's never heard it before. A number of them involve super-fast flying, trees, and wishing the song would just end already. Naturally, the song is comically long.

    P 
  • Pac Man Fever: Still Schizo Tech, but the only video games that have appeared are a stand-up arcade machine (in "Hearts and Hooves Day") and a retraux 8-bit platformer (in the "Adventure Ponies" promo). The latter case is likely intended as a nostalgic throw-back for the Periphery Demographic, though.
  • Painful Persona: Princess Celestia, the God Empress of Ponyville, is revealed to be one of these in later seasons. As the Big Good of her world and a symbol of hope, she constantly feels pressure to be polite, diplomatic, and kind to everyone she meets, to the point where a single moment without smiling can lead to serious repercussions. The episode "A Royal Problem" explores the trope in depth when Celestia and her sister Luna, the Princess of the Night, swap places for one day; Luna learns all about Celestia's burdens and how perpetually frustrated she feels—especially at not being able to express those frustrations to anyone. Add in the fact that Celestia is also compelled to be Willfully Weak because she's terrified of the depths of her own strength and you have one miserable pony.
  • Painting the Medium: Not really in the show itself, but in the line of trading cards, Discord's card has its text printed upside-down.
  • Painting the Frost on Windows: In Equestria, ponies are responsible for the rising of the sun and moon, the weather, the changing of the seasons and the survival of animals.
    • This has evidently been going on for so long that the reason the ponies are so freaked out by Everfree Forest is because nature is getting on along fine by itself there.
      • Only secondary to that are all of the bogs, cliffs, hungry multi-headed monsters, etc. They aren't even mentioned until the group is already inside.
    • In "Sonic Rainboom", it's shown that clouds, snow and rainbows (which are liquid, non-toxic but very spicy) are all made in a factory.
  • Palette Swap: A lot of background ponies are palette-swapped multiple times to make new background ponies. Sometimes even major characters themselves are palette-swapped to make background ponies; and a few are palette-swapped to make major one-shot characters.
    • The spa owners Lotus Blossom and Aloe from "Green Isn't Your Color" have the same character design but with inverted color schemes. (They are generally assumed to be twin sisters, due to sharing a colour scheme with G1's Surprise Twins ponies, and G2's Rose and Lily, who are explicitly twin sisters. However, this has never been officially confirmed.) A third spa pony, Vera ("aloe vera"), appeared in "The Show Stoppers", and shares the others' design and cutie mark, but not their colour scheme (fanon has it that she is a cousin of the other two).
    • A.K. Yearling, aka Daring Do, is a re-coloured Rainbow Dash. Oddly appropriate, giving how big a fan Dash is.
    • Moondancer is a palette swap of Twilight Sparkle. The adult version also has a partial change to her mane style, and larger eyebrows; but the filly version seen in flashbacks is effectively identical. Done deliberately to highlight the pronounced similarities between them. (It's strongly implied that Moondancer is what Twilight could have become if she hadn't made her Ponyville friends.)
    • The white nurse pony from "Applebuck Season" has a palette swap background pony from the same scene.
    • The green dragon that appeared in the episode "Owl's Well That Ends Well" is a palette swap of the red dragon in "Dragonshy". This dragon's character design was used once again multiple times in the episode "Dragon Quest".
    • The band that performed on stage in the episode "Luna Eclipsed" are actually palette swaps of the band who played on "The Best Night Ever", but wearing scarecrow costumes.
    • The multicolored parasprite swarm all share the same character design.
    • The various versions of Applejack and Rarity that Twilight makes during the titular "Magic Duel" look like pallete swaps of fillies and various other members of the apple family. This is because they really are pallete swaps, as Twilight is not strong enough to actually cast those spells (which may not even exist), so the Apple family and Sweetie Belle disguised themselves with paint and hair dyes instead.
  • Pals with Jesus: Twilight Sparkle is the personal student of Princess Celestia and is one of the few ponies who can call herself a friend of Princess Luna, both of whom are Physical Goddesses.
    • Better, she used to have Princess Cadance, who is basically the demigoddess of love, as a personal babysitter— er, "foalsitter".
  • "Pan from the Sky" Beginning: The intro starts with Twilight Sparkle in her hot air balloon, then Rainbow Dash flies past, then Twilight lands.
  • Paper-Thin Disguise:
    • Fluttershy was able to avoid all her fans in "Green Isn't Your Color" just by hiding her face behind glasses and a fancy hat… and still revealing her cutie mark. Of course, once Twilight accidentally knocked the disguise away, everyone instantly recognized her.
    • In "A Bird in the Hoof", Philomena avoids Twilight and Fluttershy by wearing an obviously fake mustache. Keep in mind that Philomena looks like a plucked chicken in a town populated entirely by ponies.
    • Subverted in "Party Of One". Pinkie Pie compounds disguises from Groucho glasses, a square hay bale, and a coat and hat. While this is not a strict Paper-Thin Disguise, as you can not see any of Pinkie Pie, it is obviously her to the audience as she would be the only character to wear stuff like that. The disguise seems to work initially when Fluttershy sees her and runs away scared, but the trope becomes subverted when Rainbow Dash doesn't notice the disguise (or recognizing it immediately as something only Pinkie would use) as she says "Hi, Pinkie Pie" in passing.
    • In "Dragon Quest", Rarity disguises herself, Rainbow Dash, and Twilight Sparkle in a silly-looking dragon costume. This manages to fool the dragons, largely because there's an actual dragon among their number that is nearly identical to the costume.
    • In "Equestria Games", Spike dons one when Twilight coaxes him to come back to the stadium, apparently forgetting he's the only bipedal creature there. A small one at that.
    • Subverted in "Brotherhooves Social", when Big Mac tries to attend the Sisterhood Social with Apple Bloom by wearing a big frilly dress, wig and shoes. No one is fooled by his "disguise". No one. note  Apple Bloom’s friends, Rainbow Dash, and even the judges are all revealed to instantly know "that’s Big Mac in a dress", but they go along with it to make him happy and because the rules never explicitly forbade stallions from participating.
  • Pardon My Klingon: Seabreeze rants at the feckless Breezies he has to deal with, a tirade that Fluttershy refuses to translate.
  • Parental Abandonment: Rampant, although a number of relatives have shown up late in the series without ever being mentioned before. Presumably, some of them exist that we just haven't seen.
    • In "The Cutie Mark Chronicles", we meet Twilight and Pinkie's respective parents, but only in flashbacks. Twilight's parents show up again at the end of seasons 2 and 3, and Pinkie's father makes a small cameo in Season 3.
      • Said episode seems to make the point that the Mane Cast members have parents but are old enough to live on their own ("Apple Family Reunion" implies the Mane 6 as 25-26 by showing Applejack as a baby 300 monthsnote  ago, thought that contradicts Word of God that the ponies are in their late adolescence/early adulthood). Strangely enough, Applejack has a younger sister but no visible parents, which plays this straight. (Rarity has been confirmed by Word of God to be living on her own, with Sweetie Belle just visiting.)
      • With Rarity's relative age being confirmed, this confirmation works for all of the main cast, as they are all pretty much the same age (plus or minus a year). Apple Bloom was probably intentionally left with Big Mac, AJ, and Granny Smith, maybe because they thought Apple Bloom was much better off in Ponyville, and the three Apples at the farm are enough to take care of her. Lauren Faust has mentioned that in her mind, they are probably dead but couldn't confirm it outright. During "Apple Family Reunion", storyboarder Sibsy Albergetti confirmed their passing with a subtle hint by Stars Are Souls. Essentially confirmed in "The Perfect Pear".
      • Averted in Rarity's case — both of her parents are shown to be alive in "Sisterhooves Social"... before immediately leaving again for a week-long vacation and leaving Rarity babysitting Sweetie Belle.
      • Likewise, sisters Celestia and Luna; particularly noticeable because Celestia is the ruling monarch of Equestria, but still goes by the title of "Princess". Which, technically speaking, merely means that Equestria is a Principality (a nation ruled by a prince or princess, and also a theocracy if Celestia and Luna really are to be considered deities).
      • Word of God is that the sisters were supposed to be queens, but Executive Meddling forced them to make them princesses because apparently young girls equate the word queen with being evil.
      • This gets downright weird when you consider the fact that Celestia has a nephew who is stated by Word of God to be multiple times removed on her mother's side, indicating that Celestia and Luna have parents—but Word of God also states that Celestia does not have parents that outrank her, which (possibly unintentionally) implies that they do exist (or once existed) but aren't in charge any more.
      • With the reveal in "Magical Mystery Cure" that alicorns were normal ponies that ascended to "princesshood", it's possible that Celestia and Luna's parents were never in charge at all. Then again, Meghan McCarthy's statement that Twilight Sparkle won't outlive her friends suggests that not all alicorns are on the same level as the immortal Celestia and Luna, still leaving room for unique parents. Of course, with the staff's love of Exact Words, it could just mean that the rest of the Mane Six will get expanded lifespans of their own somehow... an interpretation that the Season 4 finale seems to support.
    • Equestria (or at least Ponyville) doesn't appear to have the equivalent to high-school; ponies apparently achieve independence and enter the work force soon after finishing grade school, downplaying this trope. This actually fits the roughly early 20th century tech level the show's settled on for Equestria with teens getting jobs either with family or entering the workforce proper unless their parents can afford to send them to additional schooling.
  • Parental Bonus: Has its own page.
  • Parental Substitute:
    • Twilight Sparkle can be seen as a mother or sister figure to Spike knowing that she hatched him as part of passing the entrance exam at her school as revealed in "Cutie Mark Chronicles" and also following the events in "Owl's Well That Ends Well". According to Lauren Faust, Spike's original backstory had him raised by Celestia as well since Twilight was a filly herself at the time, but she also said this was a storyboard concept and not official at the time.
    • Celestia, as a Mother to her people, is this to her students, and Twilight specifically becomes the foal Celestia never had. Indeed, Twilight spends more time with and has more endearing relationship moments with Celestia than her actual mother, Twilight Velvet.
    • Mr. and Mrs. Cake serve as this for Pinkie Pie, as she sees her real parents rarely, mostly during the holidays. She lives with them in Sugar Cube Corner and Lauren Faust said they see her as a daughter. Furthering the connection, she is a Cool Big Sis and the go-to foalsitter for their blood children.
  • Passing the Torch:
    • The final Season features a major arc where Celestia and Luna plan to retire and make Twilight their successor, with help from her friends.
    • And later on, Starlight becomes the new principal of the School of Friendship in Twilight's place prior to her coronation, with Sunburst as her vice-principal and Trixie as the new guidance counselor.
  • Pegasus: One of the three main pony types. Pegasi control the weather and have the ability to walk on clouds, and two of the Mane 6 are pegasi.
  • Pep-Talk Song:
    • Pinkie Pie's "Giggle at the Ghostly" song from the second episode.
    • Pinkie also tries to sing to Fluttershy to encourage her to make a jump in "Dragonshy" ("You can make it if you try/with a hop, skip, and jump!").
    • "You Gotta Share", also by Pinkie Pie, from "Over a Barrel", although it's subverted when it ends up just making things worse.
    • "You'll Play Your Part" in Part 1 of the Season 4 finale, sung by Celestia, Luna and Cadance, encouraging Twilight after she laments that she doesn't seem to have a real purpose as a princess.
  • Perfectly Cromulent Word: The word "rufus" is used by Sweetie Belle in the German magazine comic Einfach rufus.
  • Performance Anxiety:
    • Fluttershy is extremely nervous about performing in the Hearth's Warming Eve play in Canterlot. Does not get better when Rarity tells her there might be thousands of ponies watching.
      • It returns in "Hurricane Fluttershy". She's a great flyer when it's an emergency like catching falling birds and friends, but suffers crippling stage fright when it comes to a performance, such as helping to make the tornado.
      • It happens again in "Filli Vanilli", where Fluttershy is too afraid of performing and as a result hides behind a curtain while another pony lipsynchs to her voice. When she accidentally knocks the curtain down and outs herself as the real singer, she has a nervous breakdown.
    • Happens with Rainbow Dash in "Sonic Rainboom" after she crashed during every practice session and was being upstaged by Rarity.
    • Sweetie Belle has an instance of this in "The Show Stoppers". Like Fluttershy, she has a good voice but is shy about singing in front of others, prompting her to do props and costumes for their show instead of singing, which goes to the Hollywood Tone-Deaf Scootaloo.
    • In "Equestria Games", when it's time to light the torch in front of the entire stadium, Spike's unable to trigger his fire breath.
  • Personality Powers: Pretty much everybody has a special talent signified by their cutie mark, and has a personality to match it.
  • Pie in the Face: Chief Thunderhooves of the Buffalo herd received one, and it was treated as if he received a gunshot wound. Then he found out it was delicious.
  • Pilot: "Friendship is Magic, Part 1" and "Friendship is Magic, Part 2" make up the official pilot, but "The Ticket Master" was the very first script (back when the episodes were going to be 11 minutes each instead of 22), and there's also an unreleased animated short used during early development (before the characters' voice actresses were cast—for example, the short has Tara Strong voicing Pinkie Pie).
  • The Pirates Who Don't Do Anything:
    • Pinkie works at a local bakery but is only seen baking a handful of times over the course of the series, and more often than not it's for personal reasons rather than business. It might be that she gets all her work done in the fairly early morning, as a bakery well might, before the adventures.
    • The Crystal Empire doesn't act like an empire at all. It has its own alicorn princess to rule over it and is considered important, but it appears to be limited to a single city and is treated as if it's a city-state that is affiliated with Equestria... which would make Equestria the empire, if anything.
    • Discussed in "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 1". Twilight spends much of the episode lamenting that her role as a princess is largely ceremonial.
      Rainbow Dash: So what are you supposed to do in the meantime?
      Princess Twilight: Nothing. Unless, of course, one of you needs me to smile and wave.
  • Playing with Fire:
    • In "Inspiration Manifestation", Spike uses his fire breath to melt a lock. It's probably the first time that Spike uses this ability to destroy something on purpose.
    • In "Equestria Games", Spike, despite failing at lighting the torch, succeeds in melting a huge ice mass in a matter of seconds.
  • Plot-Relevant Age-Up: Luna to Nightmare Moon, and possibly implied with her sister Celestia as they share similar powers and origins.
    • Luna again in Season 2. Apparently, it took some time for her to recover after being cured by the Elements of Harmony, and now looks much older than before.
  • Police Are Useless: Justified in Season 1's opening two-parter where Nightmare Moon blasts three Royal Pegasus Guards with lightning.
    • "A Canterlot Wedding": Canterlot is protected by a magic shield and a small army of Royal Guards who, despite being on high alert, are overrun by Changelings as soon as the shield collapses.
  • Politicians Kiss Babies: When the Flim Flam brothers appear, one of their acts during their Villain Song is to pick up Apple Bloom and kiss her.
  • Polka-Dot Disease: Two illnesses, Horsey Hives and Pony Pox, cause red spots. A third, Swamp Fever, causes orange spots that eventually start sprouting leaves an branches as the victim slowly turns into a tree.
  • Polka-Dot Paint:
    • In one episode, it's shown that rainbows are this. Pinkie Pie dips a hoof in the liquid rainbow and it retains seven distinct stripes of color, despite dripping off her hoof. She then licks it... and starts breathing multicolored fire!
    • Earlier in the season, Rainbow Dash used the pool of it in her own front yard as war paint as part of a Lock-and-Load Montage; it appeared as red, yellow, and green stripes.
  • Potty Emergency: There's a sequence in "The Last Roundup" where Pinkie has to pee like a racehorse.
    "Oh, Pickles! Hurry up in there!"
    (Pinkie Pie, slamming franticaly on the outhouse door while doing a Potty Dance)
  • Poor Communication Kills: A good portion of the conflicts that happen throughout the series can be attributed to this trope. A few notable examples:
    • In "Party of One", Pinkie Pie interrogates Spike to find out why the other ponies are avoiding her after-party-party for Gummy. Her aggression freaks him out and he takes her demand ("tell me that my friends are avoiding me because they don't like my parties and THEY DON'T WANT TO BE MY FRIENDS ANYMORE!") literally. She takes it as confirmation of her fears and becomes bitter and miserable. These two are already experts at Comically Missing the Point, so it's not really much of a change from the usual for either of them to act like that.
    • Similarly, in "Swarm of the Century", Pinkie actually knows exactly how to rid the town of the Parasprites, but utterly fails to explain this to anyone else other than making bizarre-sounding comments that would have made sense in context, causing a whole slew of other problems when the others think she's just being Pinkie Pie and ignore her.
    • Averted in "Green Isn't Your Color", since the plot is driven by deliberate secret-keeping rather than a character's inability to articulate.
    • It happens again in "Bridle Gossip", where Zecora attempts to warn the cast that they've wandered into a patch of magical plants. Unfortunately, because she insists on rhyming everything, it ends up sounding like a threat, and when the effects of the plants kick in the cast blames Zecora for cursing them. It doesn't help that that they're already somewhat scared of her. It could, however, be justified on the basis that she was new in Ponyville and was still learning the local language.
    • The entire plot of "A Bird in the Hoof" could have been avoided entirely if Princess Celestia had simply mentioned that Philomena was a phoenix, though the fair share goes to Fluttershy for not asking.
    • In "A Canterlot Wedding", Twilight Sparkle notices her brother's bride acting suspiciously in a number of ways, but the most sensitive way she can express this is to burst in on the wedding rehearsal shouting that "SHE'S EVIL!", which only makes everyone turn against her. The lack of messages given to Twilight about the wedding early on due to heightened security, making her find out about the wedding just a day or two away from the actual wedding might have contributed to this.
      • Especially annoying because the episode immediately prior featured the lesson "Don't jump to conclusions" and Twilight should have had it fresh in her mind.
    • In "One Bad Apple", the entire plot of the episode could have been resolved in the first 10 minutes easily if the CMC had just talked to Applejack about it to begin with, which Sweetie Belle repeatedly tried to get the others to do to start with.
  • Portmanteau:
    • One episode introduces us to the Parasprites: a portmanteau of "sprite" (as in a fairy) and "parasite".
    • In "The Last Roundup", Pinkie Pie rambles to Applejack about a food she's invented that's basically a chimichanga made with cherry filling, and debates whether to call it a "chimicherry", a "cherrychanga" or a "chimicherrychanga".
    • "Inspiration Manifestation":
      "I'm thinking we go by chariot! Or as everyone will soon be calling them, Rariot!"
  • Post-Treatment Lollipop: In the episode "Secret of My Excess", Twilight takes Spike to the doctor after he begins growing very fast and becoming greedier. Spike takes the entire bowl of candy the doctor keeps on-hoof for patients.
  • Powder Gag: In "Baby Cakes", when Pinkie Pie is doing a dance to try to get the Cake twins (month-old babies) to stop crying, she bumps into a cabinet, knocking a sack of flour over her. Later, when Pinkie Pie herself cries due to being frustrated with being a Badly Battered Babysitter, the twins deliberately spill flour on themselves to cheer her up.
  • Power Floats: When using the Elements of Harmony, even non-pegasus ponies float.
  • Power Glows:
    • The show applies this to, well, magic, which arguably qualifies as this trope. In the premieres of both the first and second seasons, for example, Twilight's eyes (and the second time, those of her friends too) glow when she and her friends unleash their Care-Bear Stare.
    • Also happens in her exam flashback in "The Cutie Mark Chronicles" when the Sonic Rainboom triggers her innate magic and makes it go out of control. Complete with Power Floats and a few (thankfully temporary) cases of Forced Transformation of bystanders.
    • During Twilight's transformation into an alicorn she gets surrounded by a bright purple light in the shape of her cutie-mark. Earlier in the episode, that very same power glows makes it look as if it burned Twilight into a pile of ash, much to her friends' terror.
    • "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 2": Twilight sparks with electricity occasionally as a result of being supercharged by the other Princesses.
      • When Twilight first receives the combined power, as well as when she tries to lower the moon and raise the sun, her body glows and her hair turns more ethereal, with a glow about her.
      • The Rainbow Power is very glowy indeed, which wears off once it's done its job.
  • Power Makes Your Hair Grow:
    • Princess Luna, when she appears in the second Season, has her mane and tail much longer (not to mention flowing and ethereal) than in her de-powered form seen at the end of the pilot episodes. That's nothing to say of Nightmare Moon, whose mane was long enough to form a city-hall-filling funnel cloud made of stars.
    • In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 2", when the Mane Six gain their new elements, it has this effect.
      • Tirek gets a long white mane in his penultimate transformation.
  • The Power of Friendship: Figurative and literal. The show displays what every character can accomplish when working together and trusting each other. Heck, even villains can team up when they have something in common, becoming very effective against the heroes. This trope also plays a part in saving the world countless times. "Friendship is Magic", indeed!
  • The Power of Hate:
    • Discord is pretty much the antithesis of the Elements Of Harmony, which run on the Power of Friendship. As such, he's able to get stronger from strife and fighting between ponies. The Cutie Mark Crusaders getting into a fight in front of him is what grants him enough strength to break free from his weakening stone prison. Though some have theorized that the Crusaders' fight was not a cause but a consequence of Discord's impending breakout, and that they were in truth his first victims. Whatever the case, Discord thrives off hate magic, using it to undermine The Power of Friendship.
    • The Windigos feed off of hatred and use it to spread deadly blizzards everywhere they go.
    • According to Celestia, King Sombra's magic is based off fear and hatred.
  • Power Incontinence:
    • In the episode "The Cutie Mark Chronicles", Twilight Sparkle flashes back to her entrance exam for Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns. In the course of taking the test, the sound of Rainbow Dash's first Sonic Rainboom causes her to tap into her latent magic for the first time and ends up accidentally leaking magic all over the place, temporarily turning her parents into potted plants, among other things.
    • A milder example occurs in "The Ticket Master" when, accosted by a crowd of ponies who want her ticket to the Grand Galloping Gala, Twilight Sparkle unexpectedly teleports herself and Spike away to the library. Twilight is merely surprised, but Spike ends up shocked... rather literally.
    • As her Sanity Slippage gets worse in "Lesson Zero", she starts to Teleport Spam without even apparently realizing it during the picnic with her friends.
    • During the events of "The Cutie Pox", Apple Bloom steals some of Zecora's ingredients to brew a potion that could finally grant what she desires the most: a Cutie Mark. The problem is, the potion effect doesn't stop at one and keeps giving her an infinite number of Cutie Marks (every new Cutie Mark gives her a new special ability, to boot) and Apple Bloom neither can turn them off or stop using her new abilities. Eventually, her body ends up acting on its own, without stopping to rest or sleep while Apple Bloom desperately begs it to stop.
    • The existence of "Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns" and "Magic Kindergarten", which are entirely separate schools for unicorns focused on teaching them to control their powers, imply that power incontinence is a fact of life for all unicorns, at least in early childhood. Confirmed when, after the Cake twins are born, Rarity warns the parents that baby unicorns are prone to strange, unpredictable bursts of magical energy.
    • In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 2", Twilight has trouble performing even the most basic magic after the power transfer, blowing up the door to the Golden Oaks Library simply by trying to open it and briefly teleporting to random spots all across Equestria. It isn't until Tirek comes after her that she gets a handle on her power, if only because she's no longer trying to hold it back.
  • The Power of Love: How Queen Chrysalis become stronger by feeding off Shining Armor's love of Cadance. Then she and her changelings get it by their own version of it.
  • Power of the Storm: Pegasi in general have this ability, since they can physically manipulate clouds like solid objects, i.e. they can stand on them, move them around, and make them rain or (in the case of storm clouds) cast lightning by bucking them.
  • Power Tattoo: Cutie Marks, almost unique for every pony, and they're also Distinguishing Marks, giving special magic that relates to the personal meaning of the mark, and its appearance is a Rite of Passage, meaning that the pony has had some kind of personal growth about what they want to do in life.
  • Power Trio: The Cutie Mark Crusaders; with Sweetie Belle, Apple Bloom, and Scootaloo forming the Beauty, Brains, and Brawn variation.
  • Powering Villain Realization: In "Hearth's Warming Eve", some ponies from ancient times are dealing with Windigoes — demons that cause blizzards. Eventually, it's revealed that the Windigoes feed on hatred, so the ponies need to put away their prejudice for the other types of ponies in order to survive.
  • Prank Punishment: In "28 Pranks Later", Rainbow Dash goes on a pranking spree through Ponyville, which leads to the town pranking her back by making her believe they all turned into cookie crazed zombies.
  • Pre Ass Kicking One Liner:note 
  • Prehensile Hair: The ponies' tails. It falls under this trope rather than Prehensile Tail because almost the entire length of a horse's tail is hair.
    • Near the beginning of "Mare in the Moon", Twilight Sparkle stiffens her entire tail in a horizontal position so that Spike can bounce off it while hopping down from her back.
    • Nightmare Moon strokes Rarity's cheek with her mane, although it's not so much of actual hair as a cloud of purple energy.
    • Applejack can use her tail to twirl a lasso.
    • In "The Show Stoppers", Sweetie Belle uses her tail to hold a duster.
    • In "Party of One", Rarity uses her tail to carry a box, keeping it entwined within the twists she always wears it in.
    • And Fluttershy slaps Twilight Sparkle with her tail in "The Return of Harmony, Part 1".
    • There are four examples in "The Cutie Pox". First we have Zecora smacking down some plants into a bowl with three whips of her tail. Secondly, we have Apple Bloom with her twirling the "loop-de-hoop" with her tail. Third, Apple Bloom is actually lifting a barbell with her tail. Finally,we have Zecora pulling out the "seeds of truth" from her wares with her tail.
    • In "May The Best Pet Win!", Applejack is able to throw sticks with hers, and Fluttershy's is strong enough to carry Angel Bunny.
    • In "Bats!", Pinkie Pie uses her mane to hold a flashlight.
    • Some of these actions are similar to how a real horse uses its tail as a flyswatter, just adapted for different things (Fluttershy slapping Twilight, for instance).
  • Prejudice Aesop:
    • "Hearth's Warming Eve" reveals that over a thousand years ago, Pegasi, unicorns, and regular ponies (or "Earth ponies" as they're called) used to all be prejudiced against one another, but that attracted elemental spirits who made it cold and fed on hatred, so the ponies had to learn to drop their prejudices to survive.
    • "Bridle Gossip" is about the ponies assuming that Zecora the zebra is dangerous because she lives in the Everfree forest and they've never seen a zebra so they assume she's a weird sort of pony. They eventually learn she's just a friendly herbalist.
    • "The Times They are a Changeling" is about the cast learning that not all Changelings are bad upon meeting a Changeling named Thorax.
    • In "School Raze", Twilight wants to start a school for learning how to make friends and get along. However, Chancellor Neighsay disallows it because she's allowing non-pony creatures to enter and believes they're dangerous.
    • Even the penultimate two parter, "The Ending of the End" uses this as a plot point. The villains sow distrust among the pony races that all unicorns, pegesi and Earth ponies end up segregating themselves. So much that it weakens the defenses around Cantorlot, the villains figuring the prejudice and fear of each other would be enough to keep aid from coming to the Mane Six when they go after them (though likewise unwittingly summoning the Windgos as well which only appear when there's major strife between the pony races). But thanks to the lessons taught in Twilight's school in this and the previous season, the students of said school rally their respective races to come together and fight for their kingdoms. And indeed, all manner of races do so at a critical moment in the battle against Tirek, Chrysalis and Cozy Glow, saving the Mane 6 and Spike. What's more, this unity of the races is what Twilight realizes is the true power that the Elements of Harmony embody and were always with them despite the tree and accessories being destroyed at the beginning of the season. Ultimately it's what de-powers and stops the villains' plans once and for all.
  • Press Hat: The Cutie Mark Crusaders wear fedoras with notes in them while pretending to be reporters.
  • Previously on…: Every second part of every two-parter opens this way.
  • Pride: Seems to be a common not-so-Fatal Flaw in Equestria: Twilight Sparkle takes a lot of pride in being Princess Celestia's apprentice, which may factor into her initial "I don't need friends" attitude; Rainbow Dash is a massive braggart; Applejack refuses to accept anyone's offers of help in "Applebuck Season" because she's too stubborn to admit she needs it; and Rarity takes great pride in her sense of fashion, often to the point of self-obsession.
    • Fluttershy seems to be the only who doesn't have any pride at all... until The Best Night Ever, where the animals trying to avoid her touched her credibility as animal lover/caretaker. The result? "You're going to LOVE ME!!"
    • Denies by Twilight in "Boast Busters". Twilight Sparkle wants to avoid showing off her powers, since Trixie is doing exactly that and the onlookers are reacting quite negatively to it.
    • Applejack in "The Last Roundup" episode. Her pride (damaged from not placing first in any of the rodeo challenges) drives her to leave Ponyville to try to find another source of income to replace the prize money contributions she had promised to the Mayor.
    • Averted in "The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000"; when the Apple Family is on the verge of losing to the Flim Flam Brothers' machine, Applejack shows that she has clearly learned her lesson from previous episodes and is not ashamed to ask her friends for help. Granny Smith shows plenty of it when she makes the bet in the first place, though.
  • Princess Protagonist: Starting from the fourth Season onward, main character Twilight earns the right to become an alicorn and is dubbed the "Princess of Friendship", effectively becoming this trope.
  • Princesses Rule: Princess Celestia was originally supposed to be a queen, but was made a princess due in part to this trope, leading to a situation similar to that of the Mushroom Kingdom — a princess being the ruler of a land instead of a queen.
  • Production Foreshadowing: The song "Love Is In Bloom" (from the second Season Finale "A Canterlot Wedding, Part 2", a music video on Hasbro's website, and the talking Princess Cadance toy) was first heard in instrumental form during two scenes in the Pound Puppies first Season Finale "Lucky Gets Adopted".
  • Promotion to Opening Titles: The Season 2 opening includes the Cutie Mark Crusaders, Big Macintosh, and a lot more background ponies (including Derpy).
    • Season 4's opening sequence, besides giving Twilight wings, sneaks Discord into Fluttershy's window, adds Mayor Mare, Mr. and Mrs. Cake, the Cutie Mark Crusaders, Big Macintosh, Granny Smith, Zecora, and Snips & Snails to the group shot towards the end, has Photo Finish be the photographer, and incorporates Luna into the throne room scene towards the end.
    • The sequences of subsequent seasons were always updated to include new important recurring characters.
  • Protagonist-Centered Morality: There are some episodes where we're really meant to side with the main cast when they're being just as big of a jerk (or even worse) as the antagonists. This is especially prevalent whenever snooty, upper-crust ponies are compared to our lovable protagonists... who proceed to completely ruin the former's social event because they can't be arsed to learn anything about such events or respecting them enough as to not crash their party.
  • Psychic Powers:
    • Pinkie Pie, an earth pony, has "Pinkie Sense", which is effectively a form of precognition by reading various twitches and aches along her body.
    • Discussed in "Equestria Games"; Spike thinks he can set fires with these when the torch is seemingly lit on its own, until Twilight sets him straight.
  • Psychological Horror: Surprisingly used to frightening effect in some episodes, notably "Party of One" and "Lesson Zero".
  • Public Domain Soundtrack: The music in the show is by-and-large original, but several royalty-free songs are used on occasion: Pinkie's song in "The Best Night Ever" is a rewritten "The Hokey-Pokey", and the race through Ghastly Gorge in "May the Best Pet Win!" is set to "Ride of the Valkyries".
    • "The Hokey-Pokey" is not royalty-free in the United States (Sony/ATV Music Publishing owns the rights), but "The Pony Pokey" is clearly a parody and thus not an infringement.
  • Pun-Based Creature:
    • Over its run, the show introduced multiple pun-based creatures derived from literal interpretations of real-life animals' names. Fruit bats, for instance, are Planimal bats with bodies resembling plump fruits and leaves for ears, cragadiles are crocodiles made out of craggy stone, and timberwolves are literally made out of timber, logs and branches in a roughly lupine shape.
    • The changelings' original forms resemble black ponies with a single pair of transparent wings, and their larvae look like maggots. In other words, they're horseflies.
    • The Ursa Major and Ursa Minor are giant bears literally made out of stars and the night sky.
    • Windigos are spirits named after the Wendigo and best-known for producing freezing winds.
    • Poison joke is a vegetable example of this: it's a flower named after poison oak, but instead of being poisonous it causes people who touch it to undergo maliciously humorous transformations.
  • Pun-Based Title: Episodes includenote :
  • Punny Name:
    • Fluttershy likes butterflies, and is shy.
    • Twilight Sparkle isn't the only thing that sparkles in Twilight. Her name is also doubly appropriate - the third Alicorn, Cadance, looked after her as a filly (meaning that she was in charge of Twilight, while the other alicorns were in charge of Day and Night) and now that Twilight is an alicorn herself, she likewise completes the naming cycle.
    • Most of the Apple family. Granny Smith and McIntosh are a type of Apple.
    • Fashion photographer Photo Finish (named after a term used in horse racing).
    • Nightmare Moon (see also the Stealth Pun examples).
    • The town of Appleloosa is a play on "Appaloosa", a breed of horse (see also the Edible Theme Naming entry).
    • Likewise, the sky-city of Cloudsdale is a play on the "Clydesdale" breed.
    • Canterlot = Camelot + "Canter"
    • Hoofington = Huffington + "Hoof"
    • Fillydelphia/Phillydelphia = Philadelphia + "Filly"
    • Manehattan = Manhattan + "Mane"
    • Trottingham = Nottingham + "Trot(ting)"
    • Las Pegasus = Las Vegas + "Pegasus"
    • Baltimare = Baltimore + "Mare"
    • San Franciscoltnote  = San Francisco + "Colt"
    • Foaledo, Whinneapolis, and Manechester = "Foal" + Toledo, "Whinny" + Minneapolis, and "Mane" + Manchester, respectivelynote 
    • Seaddlenote  = "Saddle" + Seattle
    • Froggy Bottom Bog is a play on Foggy Bottom, a neighborhood within Washington, D.C..
    • Twilight's owl friend introduced in "Owl's Well That Ends Well" is named Owlowiscious (a play on the name "Aloysius").
    • Fluttershy has a hummingbird friend named Hummingway.
    • Spike nicknames the shrunken Applejack "Apple-tini".
    • One of the Wonderbolts is named Soarin'.
    • Not in-show, but fans have taken to "DisQord", after the Star Trek: The Next Generation character of whom he is nearly a Captain Ersatz.
    • In general, it's probably easier to list the characters and locations that are not named by this trope. It helps that Equestrians are nearly always named after some defining characteristic.
  • Punctuated! For! Emphasis!:
    • Rarity declaring that "IT. IS. ON!" in both "Boast Busters" and "Look Before You Sleep".
    • As well as Rainbow Dash's repeated claims that the ending of "Sonic Rainboom" was the "BEST. DAY. EVER!"
    • "What'd I say? TEN. SECONDS. FLAT!"
    • "The NIGHT! Will LAST! FOREVER! Mwuahahahaahahahaaa!"
    • "You do NOT! HURT! MY! FRIENDS!"
    • "THAT! BIG! DUMB! MEANIE!"
    • "Of all the worst things that could happen, this is THE. WORST. POSSIBLE. THING!"
    • "You're, going, to, LOVE MMMEEEEE!"
    • "I! Love! Ev! Ry! THIIIIIIIIING!"
    • "You! Pinkie!! PROMISED!!!!
    • And of course: "Clock is ticking Twilight! Clock. Is! TICKING!!"
  • Put on a Bus: Their debut was the only time that most of The Movie characters (Tempest Shadow, Grubber, Capper, Captain Celaeno, Queen Novo, Princess Skystar) hada major appearance with a speaking role in the series. Particularly with Tempest Shadow, as her voice actor, Emily Blunt, would have been expensive to hire for the long run.

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