My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic / Tropes Q to S

Tropes A to B | Tropes C to D | Tropes E to K | Tropes L to P | Tropes Q to S | Tropes T to Z

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

Q

• Quirky Town: Ponyville is a textbook example of this. Appleloosa fits the bill too; they even have horse drawn horse-drawn carriages.
• Quivering Eyes: Used mainly by the cuter characters, but you'll find an example of it for practically anyone, and for a wide range of different emotions.
• Quivering Lip:
  • In "A Dog and Pony Show", Rarity, kidnapped by the Diamond Dogs, begins to quiver her lower lip when one of the Diamond Dogs slaps her on the rump and calls her a "mule", right before she moves to Inelegant Blubbering. Of course, for Rarity, it's all an act, and you should Pity The Kidnappers.
  • In "Baby Cakes", when Pinkie ends up overwhelmed by the Cake twins' shenanigans, her lip briefly wobbles and then she bursts into Ocular Gushers.

R

• Rapid-Fire Nail Biting:
  • Rarity bites her hooves in "Secret of my Excess".
  • "Magic Duel". While Twilight is testing a magic spell on some animals, Fluttershy goes into overprotective mother mode and bites her hooves for the duration of the test.
  • In "Equestria Games", one pony is seen doing this during Spike's attempts to light the torch.
  • Twilight does this briefly when Pinkie goes missing in "Party Pooped".
• Rattling Off Legal: Pinkie Pie in these three Hub commercials.
• Real After All: As of "Daring Don't", all of Daring Do's adventures.
• Reality Warper:
  • Although it was originally only Played for Laughs, Pinkie Pie has become a borderline example now that she's using Cartoon Physics to actually further the plot. So far she's relentlessly and impossibly chased more than a few characters, passed through solid walls via Offscreen Teleportation, pulled weapons out of Hammerspace during fights, slowed her descent into water in order to avoid making a splash, walked on air, obliterated the fourth wall, possesses a sixth sense that warns her of impending events, and done any number of acts that are supposed to be impossible for earth ponies, and even unicorns, whose magic obeys some rules. Her friends notice, and on more than a few occasions, are shocked out of their minds. A common refrain her friends often say is "Pinkie Pie's just being Pinkie Pie." They don't want to break their brains figuring out exactly how/why Pinkie Sense or her Offscreen Teleportation works (as Twilight tried, and failed to in "Feeling Pinkie Keen").
  • A more malevolent example is Discord, the spirit of chaos and disharmony, who uses his powers to create a World Gone Mad for his own amusement. Unlike Pinkie Pie, his powers are not Played for Laughs (well, not in the same manner). He was based on Q from Star Trek, to the point he's voiced by John De Lancie himself. Fortunately, after befriending Fluttershy, he vows to use his powers for good. Mostly.
  • Unicorn magic in general seems to have the potential to become this. Many unicorns don't appear to do much more than use their telekinesis plus a "theme" spell or two, but the variety of effects that the real wizards among them can spontaneously create with the right spells (which themselves seem more a collection of random effects than following any actual system or logic that we ever see) is quite dazzling. Alicorn magic is apparently immensely more powerful.
  • Twilight Sparkle has the range of effects but not the raw power of someone like Discord. She was the one who turned an animal into a fruit, and switched around the cutie marks. (In both cases it wasn't quite what she was going for.) Twilight's Game-Breaker-if-she-had-better-control powers are explained as most unicorns having magic related to their special talent, whereas Twilight's special talent is magic itself, giving her an unlimited range of spells.
  • King Sombra sent the Crystal Empire 1,000 years into the future, his mere presence has Mordor effects on the Empire, and his Booby Traps show he can also make Pocket Dimensions.
  • "Inspiration Manifestation" is a Spell Book that contains a spell allowing its owner to alter things to match their imagined version of it. Spike gives it to Rarity so she can use it to fix her puppet theater, which the puppeteer she built it for was disappointed in, but she quickly goes mad from the spell's power, planning to alter all of Equestria to match her idea of beauty (which basically means turning everything into a golden, gem-incrusted version of itself).
• Realistic Diction Is Unrealistic: St- st- stuttering and, um, disfluencies usually only crop up to indicate that someone is nervous (naturally, this happens most often with Fluttershy). The rest of the time, everypony speaks in perfectly formed sentences, even the canonically less-educated Apple family.
• Real Men Wear Pink:
  • In the episode "Lesson Zero", Twilight Sparkle enchants her childhood plaything with a spell that causes everyone to want it for themselves. After the spell is dispelled, the doll is left on the ground, and then picked up by Big MacIntosh, one of the few recurring male characters.
    • To clarify: Big Mac is a very large (draft horse?) stallion who works on his family's farm, is incredibly strong and tireless even by Earth Pony standards, and is implied in several background events to be a Chick Magnet... and he likes dolls.
  • Spike seems especially prone to this trope, what with his desire to attend the Grand Galloping Gala in "The Ticket Master", wearing a pink apron in "Dragon Quest" and even playing with pony dolls in "A Canterlot Wedding".
  • In "Rainbow Falls", Bulk Biceps, an absurdly muscular pony (with totally undersized... wings), is shown happily wearing one of Rarity's incredibly frilly and feminine team uniforms. Also; the most popular fandom name for him before "Bulk Biceps" got canonised was "Snowflake", runner-up was "Roid Rage".
  • And real Draconequi too, apparently, if Discord's "pretty alicorn princess" gear is anything to go by in "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 1".
  Discord: We're still on for tea, aren't we?
  • Bronies also fit in, being the show's male fanbase.

• Really 700 Years Old: Alicorns seem to age much slower than all other pony races combined. Regardless of the circumstances, Princesses Celestia and Luna don't seem to show any age following their feud 1000 years before the show began (Luna was imprisoned on the moon as Nightmare Moon while Celestia Equestria ruled alone). During the final episode, Twilight's friends all show their older age while she herself is as tall and regal as the other Alicorn princesses.
• Rearrange the Song: The theme song from the first Season is remixed slightly from "Lesson Zero" onward. Twilight Sparkle's lead vocal line was re-recorded, too.
• Record Needle Scratch: Variations of this are very common as part of the Mickey Mousing, but some examples are more literal and/or noticeable than others, for example when Apple Bloom runs into an actual record player in "Call of the Cutie".
• Recruit Teenagers with Attitude: The Mane Six are (more or less) young adults who were chosen by Celestia to wield the Elements of Harmony that can defeat Nightmare Moon.
• Recurring Extra: There are a lot of them in the show. The background ponies are the most well known and the most numerous, due to the fact that the show is centered around ponies though non-pony extras do appear from time to time.
  • The computer-based animation actually encourages this. As Ponies can be reused relatively easily versus creating a new character each time, it becomes easier to have Recurring Extras rather than create crowds wholesale.
  • This has become less common over time, as the library of character models expands. In some of the early episodes, crowds were generated by building a group of 4-6 ponies and copy-pasting them several times within the same scene.
• Recursive Translation: English dub → Japanese dub → English fansubs.
• Red Herring: In "Princess Twilight Sparkle" when Twilight drinks a potion from Zecora, what she thought was Luna turning into Nightmare Moon a second time is really a flashback to the night Celestia banished her.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni:
  • Earth ponies Pinkie Pie is an extreme Genki Girl and a Cloud Cuckoolander, compared to Applejack, who is down to earth and more straightforward.
  • Meanwhile, the pegasi Rainbow Dash is a mostly passionate and confident Tomboy to Fluttershy as the shyer and uncertain Girly Girl.
  • Turning to the unicorns, Rarity is prone to theatrics, often descending into Large Ham territory, which contrasts with Twilight Sparkle's more sensible and serious nature.
  • This is a list of the Mane Six (and Spike) by order of most red to most blue: Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Spike, Applejack, Twilight Sparkle, and Fluttershy.
• The Cutie Mark Crusaders count as well. Scootaloo being the Red Oni to Sweetie Belle's Blue Oni. Apple Bloom is either the Blue Oni to Scootaloo or Red Oni to Sweetie Belle.
  • Done with the Princesses, yet played unexpectedly. Analytical Celestia, the light-colored ruler of the Sun and Day, is the rational and wise blue oni, while intuitive Luna, the dark-colored ruler of the Moon and Night, is the quick-tempered and emotionally driven red oni. Inversed with their Evil Counterparts, Nightmare Moon (Luna) is pragmatic and Day Breaker (Celestia) is gleeful in the destruction she wreaks.
  • Hyperactive party pony Pinkie Pie is the Red to her quiet, rarely-emotional sister Maud and her bashful, even quieter twin sister Marble, but the Blue to her other sister, Limestone, who ranges from simply cranky to flat-out volatile.
  • Electronic musician Vinyl Scratch and sophisticated cellist Octavia Melody.
  • Villainous former rulers, Queen Chrysalis (Red) and King Sombra (Blue) contrast one another. Chrysalis was abhorrent, arrogant and impatient who turned everyone against her. Sombra on the other hand, was patient, underhanded who despite his tyrannical nature, actually formed a sustainable empire before being banished.
• Red Shirt: The Royal Guard has, to put it nicely, a disastrous track record in about anything. Arrest someone? They get zapped. Find a stolen bird? They get bluffed by the culprits. National Emergency? They're not even there. Guard the Archives? They unlock the doors for the intruders. Capital under attack? They get overrun without effort. Neighbouring state in peril? They play messenger. Seeing how they're Bodyguarding a Badass, you have to wonder what their purpose is beyond projecting authority.
• Reed Richards Is Useless: Not as obvious, but the powers of many of the ponies are never fully utilized.
  • The magical abilities of all the Princesses and Twilight Sparkle would seem to have the potential to have far more significant and long lasting effects on the world then is demonstrated. Twilight may not be always reliable with the big magics, but she has been demonstrated to easily and reliably utilize dozens of minor magics with major Mundane Utility. If nothing else she should be the go-to person for fixing all the minor annoyances of the town with a 5 minute spell. Cleaning, pest control, magic communication, the list of things she demonstrabley can do is pretty huge. The other Princesses presumably are even more powerful, but at least they have the excuse of being busy running the Empire.
  • Rarity has the ability to find rare gems with ease, which she uses for decoration (and possibly gives to Spike?). However, gems are still treated as somewhat uncommon, and thus likely worth a good amount of money. You would think that someone who's supposed to be the embodiment of charity would realize that selling her gems for money she can give to those less fortunate would do more good then making pretty dresses. Sure, the market would get flooded eventually, but you could do plenty of good before then (or even more good if you regulate exactly how much you sell).
  • Spike seems capable of sending instant messages across seemingly limitless distances. It's not clear whether he is unique in this ability. If he is then he could be rich selling the service. If he isn't then the presence of trivially fast communication across an empire should have a major impact on the culture of said empire, as phones and the Internet did for us.
• Reference Overdosed: The series is loaded with these, but they tend to be subtle for the most part.
• Reformed Bully:
  • Gilda the Griffon was introduced doing things like roaring in Fluttershy's face and calling everypony in town (besides Rainbow Dash) lame, which caused Rainbow to stand up to her and break off the friendship. In "The Lost Treasure of Griffonstone", Pinkie and Dash are sent to a griffon area where Gilda just happens to be living. Over the episode, Pinkie manages to draw out Gilda's better nature and she and Rainbow reconcile.
  • The Grrreat and Powerful Trrrrixie!! is a braggart and a bully to Twilight in her first appearance (possibly out of concern that Twilight would heckle her and mess up her image as a performer, as some of her friends were doing). Then Twilight accidentally shows her up in the process of saving Ponyville, and she skips town. In her next appearance, after she fails to get back at Twilight and spends most of the episode possessed by an amulet, she comes up to Twilight and apologizes.
  • Diamond Tiara, one of the wealthiest fillies in town, had been bullying the CMC over their lack of Cutie Marks (and Scootaloo's difficulty with flying) for whole seasons of the show. Then, after losing an election to a classmate and being called out and ditched by her friend Silver Spoon, she lapsed into depression. The crusaders followed her to see that she was all right, which led to the group becoming unlikely friends.
• Regional Bonus: Toy examples:
  • Canadian So Soft talking dolls (at least So Soft Newborn Rainbow Dash) can speak English or French. The Canadian version of the talking Princess Cadance toy likely can as well, judging by its packaging being bilingual.
  • There are several European special editions with often-exclusive bonus contents, the most prominent of the exclusive bonus contents being brushable non-Glimmer Wings Daisy Dreams with her cutie mark on her right flank (in a 1 + 1 pack with brushable Fluttershy), brushable Rainbow Flash (in a 1 + 1 pack with brushable Rainbow Dash), brushable Skywishes (in the ride along brushable Rainbow Dash set), brushable Starswirl (in the Rarity's Royal Gem Carriage set), and the orange carriage and purple squirrel (in the Rarity's Carousel Boutique set).
• Regional Redecoration: At the start of Season 3, a new city called the Crystal Empire appeared in an area that used to be a frozen wasteland. Canon maps of Equestria drawn since then have had to change to incorporate the new city.
• Rejection Projection: Moondancer is a more sympathetic example than many. While name-dropped in the pilot episode, she isn't shown on-screen until "Amending Fences", which she spends much of trying to pretend she doesn't want friends, only to fly off the handle when reminded of the time Twilight Sparkle moved to a different town without saying goodbye. It's implied that a desire to Never Be Hurt Again is what drove the facade.
• Remember the New Guy?: The show, like its earlier incarnations but to a much lesser extent, occasionally names ponies that have never appeared before, such as Junebug and Lickety Split^note a colt which, by the way, shares the same name with an earlier-generation pony who looks nothing like him and is a filly. The odd thing about the former is that Twilight knows her name, despite Twilight still being rather shut-in and having enough trouble dealing with her best friends.
  • Miss Cheerilee's class is probably the most blatant example; new students, like Featherweight and that random fat colt, suddenly show up and are treated as if they've always been there by the others.^note In this case, at least some of them are students from another class, as Cheerilee's class gains a stable roster in the second Season.
  • The Season 2 finale introduces both Twilight's brother, and Princess Cadance. What makes this especially Egregious is that Twilight claims her brother was her only real friend before she moved to Ponyville (despite her earlier statements that she didn't have any friends before then), which makes it odd that we never hear about him for the first 2 seasons of the show.
    • This point is parodied in this comic.
    • It is worth noting that, while family are normally friends with each other by default, Twilight Sparkle may have literally meant actual friends, rather than family members.
  • Also turned a bit on its head, as during the first episode narration, we are blatantly told that Equestria was ruled by two sisters, blah blah blah, banished to the moon, something Twilight should obviously know as she's the one reading the book. This fact is outright ignored, even as she finds other sources to corroborate. Cut to the end of the pilot, where all of the Mane Six, Twilight included, are stunned that Luna is Celestia's sister. In this case, the problem is that Twilight didn't know that Celestia was the older sister from the legend, and so didn't realize that Celestia and Luna were related.
    • The show has been very consistent about the events of a thousand years ago having faded into legend, with actual reliable history going back less than a millennium. Why has never been explained, but is assumed to have to do with all the villains from back then.
    • The ponies of Ponyville should probably be the first to recognize Nightmare Moon, as they annually celebrate Nightmare Night where Nightmare Moon is a traditional villain, and they have a huge statue of her near the forest.
• Remembered I Could Fly: Several. See trope for examples.
• Rent-a-Zilla: A few. A sea monster, three dragons, two giant bears, a hydra. Fortunately, Talking the Monster to Death is sometimes an option.
• Reptiles Are Abhorrent: Dragons are the most recurring antagonistic monsters, though it varies between episode and each dragon how antagonistic they are. In the "Dragon Quest" episode, the dragons that get any dialogue are cruel (although this might be because they are depicted as teenagers). They even go so far as to try to smash a nest of helpless, unguarded phoenix eggs. There's also the hydra from "Feeling Pinkie Keen".
  • Reptiles aren't Always Chaotic Evil — Spike and Steven Magnet aren't (most of the time) and Pinkie's pet baby toothless alligator Gummy may also be nice, as while it bites Pinkie (and other characters) regularly, it could just be how it shows affection. However, in "Secret Of My Excess", Spike's transformation into a mindless greedy monster is accompanied by his more blatant reptilian traits: long thin tongue, eye membrane, etc.
• Repression Never Ends Well:
  • In "All Bottled Up", Starlight Glimmer tries to suppress her anger, but, being a unicorn, this anger turns into a cloud of magic. This magic eventually spreads to other people, making them mad.
  • In "Horse Play", Twilight invites Princess Celestia to take part in her play, only to realize that Celestia can't act at all. She tries to hide this from her mentor, on top of dealing with many other problems, until finally, she explodes and rants about how Celestia is "the worst actress in the history of Equestria" - with Celestia listening from behind the curtain.
• Reset Button: Averted and apparently ripped out as of Season 5. Some changes, such as the destruction of the Golden Oak Library, are beyond the influence of even a World-Healing Wave.
• Retraux: The Hub's Web Game Adventure Ponies!, defictionalized from their "8 bit" promo and "8-bit" network ID.
• The Reveal:
  • Season 1's "The Cutie Mark Chronicles": Rainbow Dash's first Sonic Rainboom as a filly caused the rest of the then Mane Six to earn their cutie marks.
  • Season 2's "Family Appreciation Day": Granny Smith and her famous Zap Apples are responsible for the founding of Ponyville.
  • The Season 2 finale "A Canterlot Wedding": The "Princess Cadance" whom Twilight encounters, who seemed to change from a loving foalsitter to a mean and ruthless Bridezilla, is an evil fake in disguise.
  • Diamond Tiara is an Alpha Bitch because she was raised to be one by her mother, Spoiled Rich, who wanted her to live up to the family name.
  • Cozy Glow, the seemingly innocent filly enrolling at the School of Friendship in Season 8, turns out to be the Arc Villain in the finale.
  • The legendary Grogar, who united the Mane Six's past enemies in the final season, was really Discord in disguise, who brought the villains together to test Twilight to prove herself ready to become the new ruler of Equestria.
• Reveal Shot: This show is all about camera dynamics. For example, in "Bridle Gossip", the camera is zoomed into Twilight Sparkle's face as she wakes up to hide the fact that her horn is "cursed" by Poison Joke.
• Rewatch Bonus:
  • In "Swarm of the Century", everything about Pinkie finding instruments becomes important as the viewer knows why she's finding them from the start.
  • In "A Canterlot Wedding", now that you know "Cadance" is Chrysalis in disguise, her appearance is cast in a new light.
  • Cozy Glow turning out to be the Arc Villain of Season 8 becomes notable in a few easy-to-miss hints throughout her early appearances.
  • Watch all of Season 9 again after finding out Grogar was Discord in disguise the whole time and you'll know why the Mane Six's past foes were united from the start.
• Rhymes on a Dime:
  • Zecora, particularly impressive in "The Cutie Pox", where she sets herself up to make a rhyme with "tooth" before she sees that Apple Bloom chipped her tooth.^note from Apple Bloom's posture, it was an easy guess
    • Although there was a gag in the main MLP comic #9 where she noted (in rhyme, naturally) that she needed a moment to think up a rhyme for her next comment.
  • Not as frequently as Zecora, but Pinkie Pie still likes to rhyme a lot... especially when she's singing.
  • Discord. Not as often as Zecora, mind you, but loves handing out torturous riddles. He normally sounds far more menacing while doing so as well.
  • Iron Will’ s inspirational Catch Phrases. To name a few:
  Iron Will: When somepony tries to block, show them that YOU ROCK!
  Iron Will: Never apologize when you can criticize!
• Rhyming Title:
  • "Flutter Brutter"
  • "Bloom and Gloom"
  • "Filli Vanilli"
• Riddle for the Ages:
  • Where do winged unicorns come from? How many of them are there, and are they all royalty or even, for that matter, related? (We have the sisters Celestia and Luna, Celestia's apparent niece Cadance, and some unnamed mare who was part of the Hearts And Hooves Day myth, and Flurry Heart, all princesses.) As of mid-third Season, no episode aired has ever addressed this; even the "Hearth's Warming Eve" pageant, whose story is explicitly set before the reign of Celestia and Luna, already features the winged unicorn motif on the Equestrian flag.
    • In the third Season finale, "Magicial Mystery Cure", Rarity tells Twilight "Why, you've become an alicorn! I didn't even know that was possible!", implying this isn't the normal way alicorns come into existence.
    • Although 'Twilight Sparkle and the Crystal Heart Spell' implies that this is the normal way alicorns come into existence (by having Cadance share a similar origin), so fans are left guessing if this is case of 'Rarity was just wrong', 'novel tie-ins don't count', or 'the writers haven't made up their mind yet'.
    • Even after the publication of The Journal of the Two Sisters, we still don't know where Celestia and Luna came from.
    • The Season 6 opener tells us that alicorns are born out of alicorn parent(s). Even Celestia and Luna are, however, surprised at such an occurrence.
  • How did Spike's egg end up in Canterlot? Even though a dragon passed off as his dad in "Father Knows Beast", it ends with everyone none the wiser.
• Ridiculously Cute Critter: The latest incarnation of Spike is a rather Affectionate Parody of his traditional portrayal.
  • The ponies themselves qualify in this incarnation, thanks to Lauren Faust's distillation of their designs.
    • Even more so in "Cutie Mark Chronicles", where the Mane Cast has flashbacks to the days when they were just little fillies. It also shows Spike just after he was born.
    • Pumpkin and Pound Cake especially.
  • Pretty much anything in the series that isn't supposed to be scary falls under this, especially Applejack's dog, Winona, and the bunnies that Fluttershy takes care of. Even if Angel wants to kill you.
  • The Parasprites even qualify in-universe. Fluttershy can't resist keeping one, because they're so cute. The only one who did not fall for them was Pinkie Pie.
• Rite of Passage: The Cutie Marks are a kind of this. A pony only acquires its Cutie Mark when it discovers its true calling in life. It's sometimes even celebrated with a party called a cuteceañera.
• Roar Before Beating: The Manticore, Ursa, and hydra all do this.
• Roaring Rampage of Revenge:
  • The "Putting Your Hoof Down" episode involves Fluttershy colliding with the jerkass ponies she came across after she gets her assertiveness from Iron Will.
  • In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 2", once Tirek blows up the Library, Twilight stops trying to hold her magic back and instead goes all out in trying to stop him.
• Rotating Protagonist: Twilight is the show's protagonist... technically. Each one of the Mane Six has gotten episodes (usually numerous ones each season) in which they are the main character, and there are several episodes were Twilight has a very minor role or isn't even present at all. Each member of the Mane Six is more or less equally the main character, and that's not even counting the Cutie Mark Crusaders (who are basically the show's second set of protagonists). When Starlight Glimmer became a member of the main group, she too got several episodes centering around her.
• Roger Rabbit Effect: Not in the show, but in some of the commercials (the Target Canterlot commercial, two commercials by The Hub, the rest of The Hub's Royal Wedding promos featuring Tori Spelling, the commercials for the Pony Princess Wedding Castle toy set and the Princess Cadance talking toy, and The Hub's promos featuring Mallory Hagan).
  • The Little Pony TV sequences from the Japanese dub feature Twilight Sparkle hosting a brief segment with Pinkie Pie's voice actor, Suzuko Mimori.
• Romanticism Versus Enlightenment:
  • The message of the show is decidedly romantic at first glance; emotions and friendship are important, and the Enlightened main character must learn that lesson repeatedly. However, it's not quite that simple; Twilight Sparkle's perspective is shown as having its flaws, but she's far from "always wrong", and her task-oriented character, intelligence and logical skills help save the day at least as often as they cause problems for her. The actual moral tends to be that the Enlightenment needs to give Romanticism its due, but that doesn't make it a bad thing.
  • The "Inspiration Manifestation" spell is waaaaaay on the side of romanticism, turning anyone that casts it into a Visionary Villain. It slurps up any practicality in the vicinity and and transforms it in favor of flashy style. Think of any trope with the word "Improbable" in its title, and you have anything this spell makes.
    • Foreshadowed by the opening, where Rarity makes a puppet stand and it's completely unusable by the very puppeteer it's made for. The following events are a series of that very formula one-upping itself.
• Rousing Speech:
  • Done by Twilight Sparkle in part 2 of the premiere as she and her new friends are activating the Elements of Harmony against Nightmare Moon.
  • Twilight Sparkle delivers one of these in "The Return of Harmony, Part 2".
  Twilight Sparkle: Do you remember what I said the first day we arrived in Ponyville? I told you that the future of Equestria didn't rest on me making friends. But the opposite is true! The friendships I've made since I've been here are what saved Equestria from Nightmare Moon. And now they need to save it from Discord! [...] I've got to fight for my friendships. For them. For me. For Equestria!
  • In "Equestria Games", Rainbow Dash gives one to the other Ponyville competitors at the start. When it comes to her team, however, she acknowledges that being pitted against the Wonderbolts doesn't put the odds in their favour.
  • Twilight gives one in "The Ending of the End - Part 2" prior to taking down the villain trio for the final time.
• Rousseau Was Right: Almost everybody, pony or otherwise, has at least some spark of decency tucked away somewhere and can potentially be redeemed even if they start out antagonistic; exceptions for whom this statement is at the very least questionable are pretty rare and usually Big Bads. (And even among those, Nightmare Moon/Princess Luna is practically the poster pony for the trope.)
• Royals Who Actually Do Something:
  • Princess Celestia is, among other things, responsible for raising the sun and moon. Her younger sister Princess Luna resumes responsibility for the moon once she is freed from being Nightmare Moon.
  • Another milder example in Celestia's case is that she notably took up tutoring and technically raising the show's asocial bookworm hero, Twilight Sparkle, for the remainder of her childhood, as well as Spike.
    • It is also worth noting that she is consistently portrayed at having very little to no free time, as her official responsibilities often drag her away from things she'd rather be doing.
  • Then there's villainous Queen Chrysalis of the changelings, whose duties involve actively searching and providing food sources for her subjects. She also infiltrates Canterlot and leads the invasion on Equestria.
  • It happened in the backstory, but Princess Cadance babysitting a young Twilight Sparkle probably wasn't a royal duty.
    • Her duties as the ruler of the Crystal Empire includes raising a massive barrier to protect it should some terrible evil threaten it, and keep that barrier going until said evil is vanquished, no matter how long it takes. Sleep? This princess sleeps when the job is done, not before.
  • During the royal wedding preparations, Luna spends the nights keeping watch over Canterlot. As in, patrolling the grounds and surveilling key points with a large telescope.
  • Princess Luna is also the protector of dreams. Meaning that she sneaks around inside ponies' dreams and vanquishes anything that could cause distress or fright.
  • In "Inspiration Manifestation", the Princesses seem to be at Equestria's beck and call to solve big magical problems: Twilight gets called to rescue two ponies from the crystallized gazebo, and Princesses Cadance and Luna assist her in fixing Rarity's messes in Ponyville later on.
  • In "Equestria Games", when the cloud falls, Celestia and Luna are seen entering the fray like all the pegasi. This picture◊ proves it. Twilight (attending the games in a royal capacity, complete with crown) is also about to lend assistance, but Spike makes his move before she can act.
  • Deconstructed in "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 1". Twilight spends most of the episode lamenting how she hasn't been given much to do as a princess other than "smile an wave" and unfurl a banner for some visiting dignitaries, and is especially distraught when Celestia tasks Discord over her with tracking down the escapee from Tartarus. Twilight is finally given a role at the end of the episode when the other princesses inform her that they must rid themselves of their magic to protect it from Tirek.
  • In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 2", after the Mane Six harness the Rainbow Power version of the Elements of Harmony, Twilight earns the title of "Princess of Friendship", with the role of spreading the Magic of Friendship across Equestria.
• Rule of Cool:
  • Birds have to keep flapping their wings in order to stay airborne, and hitting anything will cause them to fall — unless you are giving a mid-air high-five to the princess's awesome pet, Philomena.
    • Even worse, in "Hurricane Fluttershy", Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy high five each other in midair using their wings.
  • Crossing the sound barrier doesn't create a spectacular light show, it's just extremely noisy — also, any light would reach any witnesses before the audible shockwave, instead of the other way around… unless caused by a rainbow-haired pegasus.
    • Do note that Equestrian physics might be different from those that apply in the real world.
    • Well, apparently so, because there is something that allows Rainbow Dash to pull 1670 Gs when she rockets out of the dive at a 90-degree angle in "Sonic Rainboom" and somehow not get ripped to shreds.
    • A Wizard Did It: The pegasi's flight is explicitly magical in nature. As such, Rainbow can fly ten times faster than any Earth creature despite being just barely aerodynamic enough to glide slightly when jumping.
  • In "Magicial Mystery Cure", it doesn’t make any sense for Twilight to flawlessly use a body part she just gained; Equestria Girls and the Season 4 premiere point this out. The main reason for that is because her soaring through the sky is a cool way to end the episode.
• Rule of Cute:
  • An adorable, baby fire-breathing dragon is permitted to live in a library full of paper books and scrolls. His fire is known to only teleport scrolls to Princess Celestia rather than burn them, but the same doesn't seem to apply with the book in "Owl's Well that Ends Well".
  • In "The Cutie Mark Chronicles", when visiting Manehattan, a young Applejack is shown carrying a Bindle Stick — without actually holding on to it, but somehow effortlessly balancing it across her back despite the high end being heavier than the lower end.
  • Also 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. Granted, Fluttershy, like all Pegasus Ponies, has the innate power to interact with clouds as if they were masonry. A swarm of butterflies as thick as the one she landed on likely has more consistency than a mass of vaporized water. Still, going from terminal velocity to 0, whether she landed on the ground or a swarm of butterflies, should have the same result.
    • The butterflies cushioned downwards, so, let's say terminal velocity rapidly going through 5 half lives before hitting zero, 1/32 of terminal before hitting zero.
  • Equestria is, for lack of a better term, a nudist civilization, however characters will wear clothing often either as a sign of their occupation (mail carriers wear uniforms, doctors wear white coats, etc.) or as a sign of social status (the wealthy often wear dresses and dress jackets). Applejack lampshades this when Rarity insists on having privacy while getting dressed for the Gala, pointing out that "We don't normally wear clothes."
• Rule of Drama:
  • When settler ponies raising apple trees are offered a chance to find out why a buffalo tribe doesn't want them around, while at the same time the buffalo could find out why the ponies planted trees on their land, the mane characters get in the way and accidentally push both sides into an actual battle.
  • When a visiting stage magician brags about how great her powers are and starts humiliating some of the mane characters, the character who knows magic like the back of her hoof refuses to do anything because she's afraid of also appearing to be a show-off. (Twilight's insecurity is one of her main character traits.)
• Rule of Fun: Pinkie Pie may run on Rule of Funny, but as the Element of Laughter, Rule of Fun is her primary motivation in life. Her destiny, as reflected by her cutie mark, revolves on doing whatever it takes to make her friends smile.
  "I had never felt joy like that before! It felt so good, I wanted to keep smiling forever! And I wanted everyone I knew to smile too. But rainbows don't come along that often. I wondered how else I could create some smiles."
  — Pinkie Pie in "The Cutie Mark Chronicles", recounting her reaction the first time she saw a rainbow.
• Rule of Funny:
  • A pony-drawn locomotive (that is, a train with a working steam engine being pulled along by horses).
  • In the episode "Applebuck Season" we see one of the ponies who ate bad muffins throwing up into a bucket. Real horses can't vomit, but cartoon animals do.
  • Pretty much anything Pinkie Pie does.
    • In particular, Pinkie Pie once appeared in a mirror to chastise Twilight for telling Spike's not-so-secret secret.
  • It’s implied Scootaloo’s inability to fly is because her wings are too small... however, the wings of Bulk Biceps are the same size, and he can fly. If wings so small they poke out of a body made of pure muscle can get off the ground, there’s no reason a filly’s couldn’t.
  • In "Spike At Your Service", Spike's ineptitude. The same dragon who baked treats for everyone in "Owl's Well That Ends Well" and "Dragon Quest", as well as cooking mini-quiche with his fiery breath in "A Bird In The Hoof", suddenly can't bake to save his neck.
  • Ponies that regularly wear clothes are the exception rather than the rule, and in "The Best Night Ever" when Rarity is unwilling to let Spike into the room when they're not dressed, Applejack lampshades that they don't normally wear clothes anyway. However, if a pony being embarassed by their nudity would be funny for a joke, then they will be embarassed.
• Rule of Glamorous: Many of the outfits that Rarity designs would be worth millions of dollars in the real world due to the sheer amount of precious gemstones that she sews into them. However, even with her talent for finding gems she is still just a small business owner and not a mining tycoon. The implication seems to be that gems are a lot more common in Equestria than real life, and they tend to be much bigger than even Earth's largest precious stones. Mr. and Mrs. Cake even put sapphires on a cupcake as a birthday present for Spike (who, being a dragon, eats gems as a delicacy).
• Rule of Perception: Played with in "Call of the Cutie": when Apple Bloom is trying to hide, she chooses several spots that would be in plain sight to anyone actually at the party, but which hide her from the viewers.
  • At the beginning of "Owl's Well That Ends Well", when Rarity walks in between Rainbow Dash and the viewers, Rainbow Dash randomly starts hovering in order to remain visible to the camera.
  • The coloured auras that appear around a unicorn's horn while they cast spells or around levitating objects are only visible to the audience. While some spells are visible to the characters, they can't identify the caster the way the audience can. This comes up a couple of times at the end of the second Season, first rendering a character unable to tell that magic was used, and then to give the audience a clue that the characters can't perceive. This is made explicit in "MMMystery on the Friendship Express", when motion without a visible cause is identified as unicorn magic.
    • The issue is muddied in "Guantlet of Fire", when Rarity is harvesting gems in a cave inhabited by sleeping bats, as she doesn't want the light from her magic aura to awaken them. Possibly there is always an aura, but it is only visible in very dark conditions, and is enhanced for the viewer's clarity.
      Rarity: "For once I wish unicorn magic wasn't so... luminescent."
  • Similarly, in "The Return of Harmony", Twilight Sparkle could not see the color fading as a cue that her friends were corrupted, seeing only that they had suddenly become jerks and she didn't know how or why.
    • Spike was able to see that the other five have turned "grey"...
    • As could Pinkie Pie after she was un-Discorded, though this could just be Pinkie Pie being Pinkie Pie.
• Rule of Seven: According to the trading cards, there exists a seventh element of harmony: Love, which is attributed to Shining Armor and Cadance. This has not appeared on the show.
• Rule of Three: Each of the mane ponies' cutie marks have something to do with the number three. Applejack, Rarity, Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie have three apples, gems, butterflies and balloons as their cutie marks respectively. The lightning bolt on Rainbow Dash's cutie mark is composed of three colors.
  • Also, all of the lead characters barring Twilight Sparkle have exactly three syllables in their names.
  • Also applies to the Cutie Mark Crusaders. There are three of them, and all three have names that consist of three syllables.
  • There are three types of ponies (Earth ponies, Unicorns and Pegasi), and both the Mane Cast in the first three seasons and the Cutie Mark Crusaders are made up of an even balance between these types.
    • With the two groups combined, there are three of each.
  • Story-wise, many episodes rely on a minimum of three ponies regardless of how many are the actual focus characters - "Look Before You Sleep", based around Applejack and Rarity, adds Twilight Sparkle to the mix, and "Putting your Hoof Down" has Rarity and Pinkie Pie in a Fluttershy episode.
    • This often ties in with the concept of the Freudian Trio, especially in Season 1 episodes where Twilight Sparkle usually acted as the Ego (such as "Look Before You Sleep" where Applejack was the Id and Rarity was the Superego). The show likes to invert the freudian trio a lot too, where the central character's behavior is out of balance and two other characters will try to correct them.
  • In "Inspiration Manifestation", Spike's description of Rarity's first puppet theater, lampshaded with Spike counting to three on his claw afterward.
  Spike: So that puppeteer didn't like your exquisitely crafted best puppet theater in the history of puppet theaters puppet theater.
• Running Gag: Pinkie Pie's random musical numbers. Usually Lampshaded.
  • Applejack biting Rainbow Dash's tail to stop her when she tries to dash away or charge against a much stronger foe.
    • Twilight Sparkle also uses her magic to do this a few times as well.
    • Applejack's habit of shoving food (or hooves) into other ponies' mouths to get them to stop talking.
  • Three earth ponies called Rose, Daisy, and Lily going hysterical and overblowing things out of proportion at the slightest hint of danger.
  The horror... THE HORROR!
  • Rainbow Dash has a tendency to… drop in unannounced. Onto your head. Hey, she wasn't called "Rainbow Crash" for nothing.
  • Twilight becoming slightly neurotic whenever Princess Celestia comes to Ponyville, insisting everything be perfect for whenever Celestia comes to visit, even if it's unofficial.
    • Taken up to eleven in "Lesson Zero" when she believes her normally flawless work ethic is at risk, a prospect which causes her great distress.
  • Fluttershy "screaming".
  • Ever since the debut of the "Pinkie Sense" in "Feeling Pinkie Keen", every few episodes, Pinkie Pie has a bout of "Twitchy-tail", which indicates something falling. Every time it has happened outside of that episode, it has always been a flower pot. The first time it happens, there's a perfectly logical reason as to why it fell. Someone opened their window, and knocked it loose. The second time, it happened inside a tent, and it still fell from the sky. No damage to the tent whatsoever. They make sure to lampshade it.
  Pinkie Pie: Oh, my fortune telling has nothing to do with my Pinkie Sense, silly. It's only good for vague and immediate events.
  (Cue flower pot drop to Twilight Sparkle's head)
  Pinkie Pie: Like that, see? (Beat) Where did that even come from?

  • Finally subverted in "Princess Twilight Sparkle", as the "Twitchy-tail" is followed not by a flowerpot landing on the titular princess, but a huge vine hitting Rarity in the head.
  • The Apple family barn has been destroyed, rebuilt and renovated how many times now? (Add another count as of "Apple Family Reunion", where it gets first accidentally wrecked and then promptly completely rebuilt with the help of all the assembled Apples, all within the last few minutes of the episode — underscored by a catchy song-and-dance number, at that.)
  • Lyra Heartstrings is often engaged in some activity in the background that she really should not be doing. For example, sitting like a human on a bench, standing on a cloud watching the Best Young Flyer competition in Cloudsdale (Cloudsdale's in the sky, and she's a unicorn, mind you), etc.
  • Lyra being in Cloudsdale was answered in the same episode via the fact that Twilight has access to a book that contains a spell that allows non-pegasi to walk on clouds. Lyra was apparently a student at the same school Twilight was since we see her in the pilot in Canterlot. It's possible she knows the same spell via similar means (though this still leaves how she got up there an open question).
  • Derpy.
    • Interestingly, she has several prominent running gags, including her inadvertent destructiveness, her maladroit tendencies, and her now nearly Once an Episode background appearances in odd places.
  • If anypony says the word "forever", expect it to be delivered as dramatic and as hammy as possible!
  • Tuesday often being the day major events happen.
  • Granny Smith always crosses the street during high speed scenes, such as chases and Scootaloo zooming through town.
  • Twilight Sparkle Tempting Fate by saying stuff like "What could go wrong?"
  • By way of shout-out, whenever a Scare Chord is called for, the one from Predator is used.
  • Spike getting flattened because of standing in front of an opening door.

Sa - Sm

• Sailor Earth: My Little Pony has many characters in pretty much all its incarnations, and there's a ton of "OC Pony" fan-art out there. This show in particular has inspired fanfic not only about the "Seventh Element of Harmony", but Evil Counterparts to the Elements (Generosity vs. Selfishness/Greed, Laughter vs. Despair, etc.), usually known collectively as the Elements of Discord.
  • Trixie making a Heel–Face Turn and becoming the Seventh Element is quite common.
  • Fan-favorite Derpy Hooves is often depicted as hanging out with and interacting with the Mane 6. Her fanon-established daughter Dinky is similarily often included with the Cutie Mark Crusaders (despite having been repeatedly depicted with a cutie mark, although it keeps changing).
  • Besides, as it is a world inhabited by what's deemed to be many Ponies, one simply needs a name and a cutie mark... you would be hard pressed to find a brony without a Pony OC.
• Sanity Slippage: Happens to every one of the Mane Six at some point or another.
  • Briefly occurs to Twilight during the climax of "Swarm of the Century".
    • She also came dangerously close to returning here throughout "Feeling Pinkie Keen". Trust us, trying to figure out a pony like Pinkie Pie can make you crazy...
    • She tried to work a tree falling through the window into the concept of a slumber party in "Look Before You Sleep".
    • In her defense though, she might have been concussed by the tree falling on her head
    • Also in "Green Isn't Your Color", thanks again to Pinkie Pie convincing her "Losing a friend's trust is the fastest way to lose a friend forever!"
    • In "Lesson Zero", Twilight's sanity doesn't slip so much as take a nosedive into the very abyss, as demonstrated here.
  • Pinkie Pie offers a truly chilling example in "Party of One", throwing a party for inanimate objects and acting moody and grumpy - the exact opposite of her usual characterization. The sequence comes complete with insanity tics, Creepy Circus Music, a Madness Makeover, and an eerie Slasher Smile; plus we eventually get to see the whole thing the way Pinkie Pie sees it.
    • Happens again during "Secrets and Pies", both from discovering that Rainbow Dash doesn't like her pies and her repeated attempts to get Rainbow to actually eat one of them. By the end of the episode, she's twitching and refusing to blink, just so she doesn't miss anything Rainbow does.
  • Even Fluttershy suffers this during "The Best Night Ever", after repeated failures in getting to spend time with the animals at the gardens of the Gala, and even caps it off with an Evil Laugh.
    • She gets another turn of this in "Putting Your Hoof Down", after getting her assertiveness training from Iron Will. Her anger results in her becoming more of a crazy bitch every hour, and increasingly tantrum-prone, paranoid and aggressive.
    • Her performance in that episode puts Fluttercruel, her discorded personality in "The Return Of Harmony, Part 1" and "Part 2", to shame. Speaking of that two-parter episode, the Mane 5 themselves, bar Twilight, went insane after Discord brainwashed them.
  • In "Inspiration Manifestation", the more Rarity uses the book's power, the more deranged she becomes.
  • Her stress-sewing in response to being boycotted in Fame And Misfortune.
• Santa Claus: Appears in a British Boomerang commercial and game, though both times only in silhouette. In canon, Santa-like accessories have been seen on a mannequin in a costume shop during the episode "The Ticket Master".
• Saying Sound Effects Out Loud:
  • In "Party of One", several ponies attempt, badly, to fake the sounds of power tools. At one point, Rainbow Dash can be heard saying "Drill, drill!" and Twilight Sparkle can be heard saying "Safety gear!"
  • In the episode "May The Best Pet Win", Rainbow Dash declares that the final challenge for who's going to be her pet is a race through Ghastly Gorge.
  Rainbow Dash: DUN DUN DUNNNNN!
  • In addition to actual chewing noises when scarfing down the ice cream, Rarity can be heard sounding out "nom nom nom" in "Inspiration Manifestation".
• Scary Stinging Swarm:
  • Twilight Sparkle has disturbed a bee's nest and been covered with stings twice: in "Winter Wrap-Up" and "Feeling Pinkie Keen". Rainbow Dash was chased by a swarm of bees in "Fall Weather Friends", but managed to get away from them. Interestingly, there's a beehive hanging from one of the upper branches of the library where Twilight lives.
  • In "A Rockhoof and a Hard Place", Rockhoof unwittingly delivers a tree containing a beehive to Zecora. Of course, she is immediately swarmed and stung.
  • "Campfire Tales" features the menacing fly-ders: flying spiders that swarm like bees. Applejack, Rarity, Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle, Scootaloo are all bitten a few times by the creatures, while Rainbow Dash gets absolutely decimated by them midway through the episode. This is Played for Laughs, as Rarity struggles to contain her disgust at the sight of her friend's grotesquely swollen face.
• Scenery Porn: The series takes full advantage of this (take these two◊ shots◊ for example). The color, fluidity and amount of tiny details crammed into general shots are impressive. Some episodes use backgrounds that have never been seen before and are unlikely ever to be seen again, like the Training Montage in "Call of the Cutie", the fall foliage in "Fall Weather Friends", and the Wild West scenery throughout "Over a Barrel". There's also the pegasus city of Cloudsdale, an entire city made of clouds and rainbows. Its a pretty Sugar Bowl! In fact, Cloudsdale◊ looks very similar to Mount Olympus◊ from Disney's Hercules (which also falls under this trope).
• Schizo Tech: The baseline level of technology in the show was originally supposed to be evocative of Medieval Fantasy, but this fell apart in just the first episode with steam locomotives and electric lighting. The level of technology became increasingly erratic as the show went on — alongside electric lighting, there are streetlights that seem to have fireflies for light, and also lanterns with candles; old-style record players exist alongside DJ turntables; and printing presses exist alongside typewriters, circulation newspapers, and mass-produced hardcover books; and black-and-white reel-to-reel film projectors exist alongside color film cameras and instant cameras. Motor vehicles, space travel, and computers, may also exist, depending on what supplementary material like novels and toys you may consider canon or not. The ponies also have many types of modern appliances, but we virtually never see a power cable or batteries, leaving it ambiguous how they're powered.
• The Schlub Pub Seduction Deduction: Corollary: if you're a colt who isn't a fashion designer or an absolute stud, and Rarity talks to you, she probably just wants to take advantage of you. Rarity has shown a few instances of this, and fandom extrapolated it into her standard M.O. when she needs something that a male can give.
• Scooby-Dooby Doors: Briefly done with a rocking train car's beds in "Over a Barrel", The Mysterious Mare Do Well leads Rainbow Dash on a proper one in "The Mysterious Mare Do Well", and done between Philomena, Twilight Sparkle and Fluttershy in "A Bird in the Hoof".
  • Interestingly enough, the aforementioned scene in "A Bird in the Hoof" doesn't bend physics to the degree that most examples of the trope do. If you watch carefully, the characters always come out of a door that's set in the same house (or adjoining house) as they door they went in, until Philomena's grand exit from the scene. Neither does the one in "The Mysterious Mare Do Well", since there are at least four Mare Do Wells involved in the chase scene, one of which can canonically teleport.
• The Scottish Trope: The pegasus mare known to fans as Derpy is a meta-example. While the showrunners are fine with fans using that name, ever since her name was removed from the dialog of the one episode in which she was voiced, they've been careful to avoid naming her themselves. In New Media, they tend to refer to her with periphrastic phrases like "a certain pegasus mare", and on official merchandise, her name is replaced with a drawing of a muffin.
• Screen Shake: Standard effect for emphasizing an impact, as well as some other things.
• Season Fluidity: While many episodes are standalone stories, continuity at a season and series level has become more important as the series goes on. Discord's reformation and the reappearance of the Crystal Empire, for instance, have now appeared as plot points in future episodes. Probably the biggest example, though, is Twilight's transformation into an alicorn and subsequent coronation.
• Second Place Is for Winners: An ongoing theme of the series is that winning a competition is less important than bonding with your teammates, and that cooperation is better than competition. Winning for its own sake is not usually the point.
  • In the running of the fall leaves, both Applejack and Rainbow Dash are so focused on defeating each other that they both come in last. Twilight Sparkle places far ahead of what anyone expected... but even she only comes in fifth place, and is quite happy with that.
  • In the Sisterhooves Social race, Sweetie Belle and Rarity place second, but both are so happy to have reconciled with each other that they don't even care.
  • In Rainbow Dash's pet race, Rainbow ends up giving the prize (pethood) not to the winner of the race but to Tank, the turtle who stayed by her side and helped her when she was hurt. The falcon, who technically won the race (though not under Dash's terms), accepts this with good grace.
  • In the cider-making competition, the Apple family loses to the Flim Flam brothers's Wonderful Machine even with the help of the rest of the cast. But because they refused to sacrifice quality for quantity, they win anyway when the other ponies drive Flim and Flam out of town.
  • The central conflict of "The Last Roundup" occurs when Applejack fails to earn any blue ribbons or prize money at the Equestrian Rodeo, and runs away because she can't bear to return without the money she had pledged to the Town Hall. The others must convince her that they value her more than any victory or ribbon, and that they're just as proud of her even if she doesn't place first.
  • In the yearly water lift to Cloudsdale, Rainbow Dash initially is gunning for setting a new wing power record. When her best flier and a number of other pegasi fall ill, they are unable to set a new record, but with Fluttershy's help they at least manage to complete the water lift, which is a triumph all by itself. The normally super-competitive Rainbow brushes off having to give up the record with barely a second thought, far more concerned with seeing the job completed.
    • There's even a sub-example here; Fluttershy's best speed of 2.3 is still considerably below the average of the other pegasi, but because it was enough to put them over the top, they all cheer and celebrate it for her anyway.
  • Driven home in "Wonderbolt Academy". Lightning Dust may technically have a bit of an edge over even Rainbow Dash because she pushes herself harder (albeit not physically, as the episode portrays them as fairly evenly matched), while Dash, for all her athletic prowess, has shown herself to be a bit of a slacker at times. In the end, though, she still fails and the team leader position goes to Rainbow Dash precisely because Dust is too competitive and unconcerned about collateral damage as long as she "wins".
    • It's not that Lightning Dust has more physical ability or even pushes herself harder than Rainbow Dash, she is reckless and willing to take unnecessary risks that Rainbow Dash is not.
  • In "Equestria Games", though Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy and Bulk Biceps ultimately place silver in the relay race, they're still happy with the result. It helps that Ponyville still had the highest medal count at the end, and Rainbow Dash had accepted from the start that beating the Wonderbolts was a long shot.
• Sealed Evil in a Can:
  • Nightmare Moon was sealed in the Moon for a thousand years as "The Mare in the Moon".
  • Discord had been imprisoned in a stone statue by Celestia and Luna since ancient times for the suffering his rule brought everyone in Equestria. The Cutie Mark Crusaders release him by creating discord (fighting) in front of it, giving him the power to break free from his weakened prison. He's put back in his can at the end of Part 2. The Mane Six eventually release him and reform him.
  • "It's About Time" reveals that there're a bunch of these things sealed away in Tartarus that are guarded by Cerberus.
    • In the Season 4 finale, it turns out one of them did get loose while Cerberus was away; Tirek.
  • King Sombra was turned into a Living Shadow and imprisoned in the northern ice by Celestia and Luna. They were at least more thorough than with Discord.
  • In "Inspiration Manifestation", the tome was hidden away and locked behind a caged door for a reason. But Spike fails to notice any of this.
• Secret Test of Character:
  • This was generally the reason Celestia sent Twilight to Ponyville to make friends prior to the return of Nightmare Moon in the first episode. She knew Nightmare was returning that night and Twilight has the power to defeat her, but she couldn't unleash it without help from the friends she met, and letting true friendship into her heart in return.
  • In Part 1 of "Princess Twilight Sparkle", after the Mane Six give up their Elements of Harmony to save the Tree of Harmony, the tree becomes their tester. The tester presents them with a box that is locked and neither Celestia nor Luna know how to open it. Throughout Season 4, the six each find a personal challenge to their specific Element of Harmony and usually must take a more Good Is Not Soft, Good Is Not Nice, or otherwise hold firm to their core element despite the pain it causes them. When they act this way, they inspire others to be good as well and are given a gift representing the inspired person's friendship and change. Each one of those gifts in turn are changed into the keys needed to unlock the box and grant the Mane Six a power even stronger than the Elements of Harmony.
  • Celestia reveals in the final season opener that all of the adventures Twilight had and the lessons she learned were tests to see if she could someday become her successor.
  • In the Grand Finale, Grogar was revealed to be Discord in disguise, and he united the Mane Six's past foes to test Twilight on her bravery and skills to prove if she's ready to become the new ruler of Equestria. Of course, it causes more harm than good.
• Self-Punishment Over Failure: Princess Luna was corrupted by jealousy and tried to plunge the world into eternal night; the opening episodes of the show involve the main cast restoring Luna to her right mind. The season 5 episode "Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep?" reveals that Luna felt so much guilt over her villainous past, she created the Tantabus—a monster that inhabits Dream Land and turns all of her dreams into nightmares—solely to punish herself.
• Self-Soothing Song: In "Sleepless in Ponyville", after Scootaloo wakes up from her nightmare about the Olden Pony, she spends the rest of the night quietly humming to herself so she doesn't fall asleep again.
• Sequel Hook:
  • The story normally takes place in such a way that any episode can happen any day, but Season 3's premiere ended like this, with Princess Celestia nodding at Princess Luna, who magically summons a book with stars and swirls on the cover.
  • The Season 3 finale (which incidentally pays off said Starswirl sequel hook) definitely is trying to draw you in for Season 4. Twilight turns into an alicorn and becomes a princess of Equestria. According to the writer's twitter, she considers this episode the first in a three-parter.
• Series Continuity Error:
  • In Twilight's flashback in "The Cutie Mark Chronicles", the egg Spike hatched from is shown to have been purple with darker purple spots. But in "Mare in the Moon", Spike said that he "started out as a cute little purple-and-green egg". (He could've been wrong, though.)
  • In various flashbacks where the moon is visible, Nightmare Moon's silhouette is no longer cratered on the surface... Did she escape early?
  • In "Winter Wrap Up", Twilight mentions that Ponyville was founded hundreds of years ago. However, in "Family Appreciation Day", It's revealed that Granny Smith was alive (and had her cutie mark, even) during the initial founding of Ponyville. There are three possibilities: Either someone messed up, an intentional retcon was made, or non-alicorn ponies can have a lifespan of over 200 years. Apparently, Twilight's mistake. In Season 4's "Simple Ways", Twilight is surprised to find out that Granny Smith is a founder.
  • In "Celestial Advice", a flashback shows the Mane Six barring Twilight all already being close friends before the pilot, even though the whole point of the pilot was to show they hardly knew each other before Twilight brought them together (barring Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash being childhood friends and Pinkie being friends with everypony by defeault).
  • In "Parental Glideance'', another flashback shows that Rainbow Dash, the Wonderbolts, and Lightning Dust were all in the same flight class together as fillies, even though they act like they've never met until the present day.
• Seven Deadly Sins: Loops in with Achilles' Heel. For all of them.
• She's a Man in Japan: Babs Seed and Derpy Hooves were changed to males in the Hungarian dub.
• Ship Tease: Has its own page.
• Shoehorned Acronym: Twilight calls Shining Armour her Big Brother Best Friend Forever, or BBBFF.
• Shout-Out: Too many to list here.
• Showdown at High Noon: Parodied in "Magic Duel" the first time Twilight faces Trixie.
• Show Within a Show: Daring Do's story from the episode "Read It and Weep" takes place in a fictional setting from a book Rainbow Dash is reading. Whenever she starts reading it the camera fades and shifts into Daring Do's world to see her in action.
• Shown Their Work: Has its own page.
• Shrinking Violet: Fluttershy, naturally. Princess Luna also shows a few shades of this in "Luna Eclipsed", after the entire town seemingly cowers in fear from here, despite her Heel–Face Turn. Of course, this is just because it's Nightmare Night (Equestrian Halloween), and it's fun to be scared, on Nightmare Night.
• Shrunk in the Wash: This happens after Sweetie Belle washes Rarity's clothes without permission. In this case, it's only one specific wool sweater that shrinks after it's put out to dry. Rarity is very angry at first, and then later realizes that the smaller size makes it a perfect fit for her cat.
• Siblings Share the Throne: Equestria is, of course, ruled equally by the two sister princesses Celestia and Luna.
• Sick Episode: One of the Polish and Norwegian magazine stories.
  • "The Cutie Pox" involves Apple Bloom contracting a potentially life-threatening illness.
  • "Three's a Crowd" has Twilight and Cadance having to take care of Discord, who has apparently contracted an illness called "Blue Flu", though this was proven at the end to be another one of Discord's tricks to test Twilight's friendship with him. Whether or not the alleged sickness actually exists in Equestria or if it was just conjured up by Discord is unknown, but it's possible.
    • Given that "Blue Flu" in our world is a name for a tactic for going on strike when it isn't allowed by everyone calling in sick at once, pioneered by policemen (hence the name), it's very likely that it's not a real illness.
• Sickly Green Glow:Evil magic is usually depicted as glowing a bright, acid green.
  • Princess Cadence is shown to have a magical aura that is best described as "radioactive green". The flashback that shows her actual aura is light blue is the first sign that she is not actually Cadence, but instead the evil shapeshifter Chrysalis in disguise.
  • King Sombra, an evil Sorcerous Overlord, has radioactive-green eyes, as does Twilight when using his Black Magic.
  • "Inspiration Manifestation": When Rarity is corrupted by a magical book, and her magic and eyes go from their usual light blue to a vivid green, and stay like that until she manages to break free from its grip.
• Side-Story Bonus Art:
  • An◊ apparent◊ set◊ of◊ at◊ least◊ ten◊ different◊ promotional◊ scenes◊ has shown up (in whole or in part) on various official websites. While one clearly depicts a scene from the end of "Friendship is Magic, Part 2" and a few others resemble other scenes from the show, some are entirely original.
  • In the initial version of a recipes PDF on The Hub's website, the page for Cutie Mark Crusaders Chocolate Popcorn included a Flash Forward (originally fanart drawn by layout artist Kat Stenson long before becoming part of the show's crew) that depicted Apple Bloom, Scootaloo, and Sweetie Belle all grown up with cutie marks.
• Significant Birth Date:
  • Spike was born the day Rainbow Dash performed her first Sonic Rainboom, which in turn led to the rest of the mane six earning their cutie marks.
  • Pinkie Pie's birthday is the day right after Gummy's.
  • Rainbow Dash's birthday is also the anniversary of when she moved to Ponyville; thus it's her "birth-iversary".
• Silver Spoon Troublemaker: Diamond Tiara is the daughter of Filthy Rich, the wealthy corporate executive. Along with her partner-in-crime Silver Spoon, Diamond Tiara is an Alpha Bitch who mocks anyone who doesn't have a cutie mark. In "Crusaders of the Lost Mark", however, it's revealed that this behavior comes from her mother Spoiled Rich's emotional abuse of her. She ultimately ditches this trope after she redeems herself.
• Sir Swearsalot: It's a kids show so there's no actual cursing, but if one counts the use of phrases like "What the hay...?" or "Oh, horse-apples" as profanity, Applejack has the foulest mouth of the Mane 6, followed closely by Rainbow Dash.
• Sissy Villain: Discord seems to enjoy bouncing, skipping and skating on ice or even soap. And even cross-dressing at times.
• Sixth Ranger: Babs Seed becomes the fourth Cutie Mark Crusader. The fandom seems to have accepted this with no complaints. After she earned her cutie mark though, she's no longer part of the group.
  • Starlight Glimmer joins the Mane Six at the end of the fifth Season finale.
• Slapstick: The ponies see their share of Amusing Injuries, particularly Applejack, Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash. Dash doesn't have the nickname "Rainbow Crash" for nothing.
  • Most notably, Twilight Sparkle during "Winter Wrap Up" and "Feeling Pinkie Keen". Ouch.
  • Applejack's and Rainbow Dash's rivalry escalates to Tom and Jerry levels in "Fall Weather Friends".
  • Fluttershy plowing face-first into the door of her house in "Luna Eclipsed"
  • Philomena vomiting on Fluttershy's face in "A Bird in the Hoof".
  • The crew tries to ensure that Rarity's perfect coiffure is ruined at least Once an Episode.
  • Nearly all of the Mane Six get subject to this in "Castle Mane-ia", repeatedly scaring each other in the castle and falling victim to its booby traps.
  • In her interview for the Bronies documentary, Lauren Faust has this to say about putting slapstick into a show for and about girls:
    "What I kinda had to push for in the beginning was making it funny. That was actually really hard, 'cause like even my crew, even the other artists, jumped to this conclusion that it had to be really soft. And I was like, 'No, it's funny that that character tripped and fell. Make her hit her face really hard, you know? That's funny!'"
• Slasher Smile: Pinkie Pie gets a frightening one in "Party of One" when she was playing a party with inanimate objects as her guests. Twilight Sparkle gets several in "Lesson Zero", but most frightening was when she bursts out of the bushes, complete with insane giggling. It didn't help that she was watching the Cutie Mark Crusaders at the time, which gives the impression that she's a... yeah.
• Sleep Mask: Rarity, in "Sisterhooves Social". Pinkie Pie wears one in one of the German magazine comics (scanlated as A Bright Idea).
• Slice of Life: Many of the episodes are like this, at least by pony standards. Particularly Slice-of-Life-ish episodes are Look Before You Sleep", "The Show Stoppers", "Luna Eclipsed and "Sisterhooves Social".
• Sliding Scale of Anthropomorphism: There are a lot of animals and creatures of varying degrees of anthropomorphism inhabiting the show's world. Most of which are either Talking Animals or Civilized Animals.
  • The diamond dogs and Ahuitzotl^note the closest thing to classify him as, at least are Funny Animals.
  • Ponies, zebras, donkeys, griffons, yaks, and buffaloes are a cross between Civilized Animals and Funny Animals, due to being quadripedal but acting all-human otherwise.
  • Some farm animals like cattle (bulls and cows) and sheep are Talking Animals.
  • Dragons and (possibly) sea serpents are Partially Civilized Animals of varying body types.
  • Hydras, manticores, cockatrices, phoenixes, most woodland creatures (especially the small and furry ones) and some of the Mane Cast's pets are Body Type 6 Nearly Normal Animals.
• Sliding Scale of Animal Communication: Level 5 - all hoofed animals (and griffons; they have paws and talons) seem to be able to converse freely with the ponies. Pets, monsters and other creatures reach various levels of Intellectual Animal, but generally can't communicate beyond their species.
  • Fluttershy breaks this occasionally, but she's explicitly stated to be able to understand animals "on a higher level". Probably part of being a Friend to All Living Things.
  • The one exception to the above appears to be goats, as seen in "Putting Your Hoof Down".
  • Steven Magnet, a sea serpent, is also quite fluent in speaking to ponies, as are all three heads of the Chimera.
• Sliding Scale of Continuity: A level 3 (Subtle Continuity), there are Continuity Nods and Call Backs to previous episodes but with the exception of certain two-part episodes, the episodes for the first three seasons are more-or-less stand-alone. After Season 4, the series begins to gradually edge toward level 4 (Arc-Based Episodic), mixed with some stand-alone episodes.
• Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Quite idealistic, but with a satisfying dash of cynicism mixed in. For example, in "Over a Barrel", the conflict driving the episode is ultimately easily solved because both sides are basically decent — but at the same time, the idea that it could be solved by singing a cute song that will make everyone love each other is mercilessly mocked. In general, problems often arise because the characters aren't perfect, but there's nothing the Power of Friendship won't solve by the end of the story, even if it involves punching out Cthulhu.
  • One good example of this series' usage of Mostly-idealistic-but-with-a-dash of cynicism is the ending of "Suited For Success". After a nice show of friendship and a heartwarming moment where Rarity does forgive her friends, she then points out that her career is still ruined. It was then saved by a second chance by Hoity Toity.
• Slouch of Villainy:
  • In the Season 2 premiere, Discord gets in on a bit of this action during the climactic scene via use of his evil-looking throne, though his posture varies moment by moment as a reflection of his chaotic personality.
  • In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 2", when Tirek is seated on Celestia's throne, his posture has a decidedly unroyal air.
• Smart Ball: As deranged as Pinkie Pie can very often be, she actually does know what she is talking about sometimes. Rainbow Dash seems to be picking this up every now and then as well.
• Smash to Black: Done frequently in many act breaks.
• Smelly Skunk: In the season 1 episode "Winter Wrap-Up", Twilight Sparkle goes through a Humiliation Conga involving snakes, bats, having a hornet's nest fall on her head, and ends up running into a den... and getting sprayed by a family of skunks. Next scene shows her bathing in a tub of tomato juice. The trope comes up again in the episode "28 Pranks Later" when Cranky's toupee is replaced with a skunk.
• The Smurfette Principle:
  • Inverts the Smurfette Principle with Spike, who is the only male in the regular cast, and the only other significantly reoccurring male characters being Applejack and Twilight's brothers, Big McIntosh and Shining Armor.
  • Major villains are gender equal (male Discord, King Sombra, and Tirek, female Nightmare Moon, Queen Chrysalis, and Starlight Glimmer etc.), but lesser antagonists tend to be either female or random monsters.

Sn - Sz

• Snobby Hobbies: The Equestrian upper class, a loose collection of old money, nouveau riche, celebrities, and assorted hangers-on, prefers to spend its time on activities such as croquet, garden parties, perusals of art galleries, fancy dinners, the opera, and the like.
• Snowball Fight: Happens in one of the German comics. The ponies get up on their hind legs and throw snowballs with their front legs.
• Society-on-Edge Episode: The two-parters in general are these in comparison to the rest of the series, catching most major characters off guard in each case. The conflicts in the rest of the series seem mundane in comparison.
  • The Nightmare Moon arc involved the threat of eternal darkness.
  • The Discord arc involved turning Equestria into a World of Chaos.
  • "The Canterlot Wedding" two-parter involved a wedding plan coinciding with a need for increased security due to a mysterious threat against Canterlot. (Turned out it was connected to the wedding, namely due to the involvement of Chrysalis and the changelings in each.)
  • The King Sombra arc involved the threat of the enslavement of an entire kingdom.
• Solid Cartoon Facial Stubble: On the rare occasions a pony has facial stubble, it will be animated by darkening the lower half of their snout.
• Solid Clouds: Clouds are a strange example. The pegasi ponies can interact with them as if they are solid, and have the job as a race to manage the weather. Alicorns, who have the properties of all three pony races, Griffons, and other flying animals can sit on clouds as well. For most other ponies, clouds act as they would in real life without magical assistance.
• Something Else Also Rises: While it (presumably) doesn't indicate arousal, it is shown numerous times that a pegasus's wings can snap out suddenly when they get excited. The fandom has fully pounced on the idea and it is now known as a "wingboner".
• The Something Song: Although many of the musical numbers have been given names by the fans, composer Daniel Ingram's website lists many of the songs as "Laughter Song", "The Gala Song", "The Ticket Song", etc.
• Sorting Algorithm of Evil: Season 1's only true villain is a Sealed Evil in a Can Mad God with the intention of plunging the world into The Night That Never Ends, but turns out to be an Anti-Villain whose attempts to stop the protagonists do more good than harm. Seasons 2 begins with the Mane Cast facing off with reality warping Spirit Of Disharmony who is not only truly malevolent, but effortlessly breaks and Mind Rapes them without a second thought and ends the first episode unquestionably victorious. Sure, there were some minor "villains" between them, but Discord is without a doubt far more dangerous than Nightmare Moon.
  • And Word of God has hinted that it may have been another more powerful/evil force that corrupted Princess Luna into Nightmare Moon, and helped free Discord.
  • Then, at the second Season finale, there was Queen Chrysalis and her Changeling armada. While perhaps not quite up there with Discord, having made a number of grave mistakes regarding Twilight, she still came very close to succeeding. Her plan on the whole went off without a hitch, her armies defeated the Mane Cast before they could even get to their greatest weapon, and more importantly, she made a fool of Celestia the whole way through, with both deceit and raw power.
  • King Sombra's placement is a bit difficult. While how powerful he truly is is not seen, he displays powerful magic and is strong enough to brainwash the entire Crystal Empire and make it vanish for a thousand years, and required the Princesses to intervene to beat him the first time. He's most certainly the most straightforwardly dangerous of the villains, and nearly won simply due to how well he planned. So even if he's not as powerful, he may be the most dangerous.
  • Season 4 has Lord Tirek, who was more powerful, more menacing, and more flat-out evil than every other villain previously listed in this entry all put together. Discord was his helpless pawn, and what he was doing to ponies made Sombra look almost humane.
    • Subverted as it turns out with the season premiere's villain being a smart, but otherwise not powerful to the level of the rest of the seasonal villains, unicorn. In fact the Mane Six don't even need to use the Elements or Rainbow Powers and defeat Starlight with pure guile.
• Space Whale Aesop: Due to the fantasy nature of the show and the requirement for an Aesop per episode, this was inevitable.
  • From "Bats!": If you let your friends pressure you into doing something you don't think is right, you could turn into an apple-hungry bat-pony hybrid.
  • It's better to give than receive — or else you'll turn into a giant greedy monster and practically destroy your hometown.
• Speaks Fluent Animal: Fluttershy is the Doctor Dolittle of the group; though there are a few animals she isn't able to speak with, at least at first.
• Spear Counterpart: In the Season 4 episode "Pinkie Pride", Cheese Sandwich is introduced and characterized as essentially a male Pinkie Pie.
• Species Surname:
  • Angel Bunny, though he's usually referred to as just Angel.
  • In Season 1, the owner of the doughnut shop in Canterlot was known as Pony Joe. Later, in Season 2, he's known as Doughnut Joe.
  • In "Equestria Games", Ms. Harshwhinny constantly refers to Spike as "Mr. The Dragon".
• Speech-Impaired Animal: Pinkie Pie in the episode "Bridle Gossip".
• Sphere of Power:
  • In the Pensieve Flashbacks of the episode "Princess Twilight Sparkle, Part 2", the Elements of Harmony when rotating around Celestia in the first flashback, and then again, around both Luna and Celestia in the second (earlier) one, form a Sphere of Power.
  • In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 2", the Mane Six imbued with the Rainbow Power are surrounded by a bright, multicolored sphere that lifts them into the air and is completely impervious to Tirek's attack. Then, after defeating the villain, it expands into a World-Healing Wave.
• Spikes of Villainy:
  • King Sombra has a crown adorned with spikes. Even more prominent is his unicorn horn, which is so curved and sharp that it more closely resembles a spike that's been driven through his head.
  • In "Inspiration Manifestation", as if the book hidden behind a wall on a pedestal over a pit weren't suspicious enough, it has these on the cover.
• Spin-Off Babies: So far limited to nine So Soft toys (of Pinkie Pie, Sweetie Belle, Sunny Daze, Spike, Rainbow Dash, Princess Skyla, Apple Sprout, Cottonbelle, and Pinkie Pie again) plus two commercials. Three of the toys are of characters who haven't appeared in the show (Princess Skyla, Apple Sprout, and Cottonbelle), so those characters may be babies in the present day.
• Spiritual Successor:
  • The show is one to Littlest Pet Shop (1995) in that both are zany, witty cartoons based off of otherwise ballyhooed girls toys.
  • The Web Games Castle Creator, Card Creator, and Twilight Sparkle's Royal Invitation Designer are similar to the G3 Web Games Ponyville Forever and Friendship Ball.
• Spit Take: Invoked by Pinkie in "Magical Mystery Cure", after the mane six are told by Celestia that Twilight is a princess.
• Spoiled Brat: Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon, who are an Alpha Bitch duo and are constantly bullying young ponies without a cutie mark, specifically the Cutie Mark Crusaders. It's later revealed this is happening because Diamond's mother, Spoiled Rich, raised her to bully.
  • Fluttershy's main pet companion, Angel Bunny, who is known for having tantrums aimed at Fluttershy when he doesn't get what he wants, including one small simple topping on a salad he wanted.
  • Since his reformation, Discord has shown traits similar to that of a child when they don't get what they want. His anger at Fluttershy when he fails to corrupt her in the maze using his mind games and instead resorting to force, is an example. In "Keep Calm and Flutter On", his rant to Fluttershy about "doing whatever he wants, whenever he wants" and being "bossed around" by her, sounds a lot like an angry child to their parents. In fact, Fluttershy acts a lot like a mother toward him when he does or wants to do something wrong, such as his shrinking at her when she tells him to stop thinking what he was thinking in "Princess Twilight Sparkle, Part 2".
• Spoiler Opening:
  • The show's ending credits list the names of Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle as main characters right from the debut episode. Less of a spoiler given that half the season goes by before they appear again, and viewers wouldn't know who they are until that point.
  • The Novelization of "Dragonshy" puts angry Fluttershy right on the cover.
  • As shown briefly in Rarity's "Hot Minute" video, the opening for Season 4 will be updated to feature Twilight with her alicorn wings.
  • Averted with the new opening for Season 8. It is entirely remade and features lots of new characters and locations — but it wasn't used for the season premiere, precisely to avoid spoiling everything. Instead, the opening was revealed only with Episode 3, leaving the premiere introducing first those new characters and premise.
• Squashed Flat:
  • Twilight Sparkle in "Feeling Pinkie Keen". A door slams into her twice in the episode, resulting in this trope (sort of).
  • Applejack in "Applebuck Season", when she hit the ground after her first miss onto Rainbow Dash's seesaw.
  • Fluttershy in "Luna Eclipsed". While trying to make an escape into her house, Twilight shuts the door, causing her to pancake herself on it.
• Squeaky Eyes: Used for some emphasized blinking, as when Fluttershy is being persuasively cute or Pinkie Pie is being ditzily innocent. Aside from this specific trope, eyeballs moving in some notable way also sometimes make noises.
• Squee: The best description for the sounds made by ponies when they grin out of either contentment or embarassment. In-show, this is Rainbow Dash's reaction every time she's close to the Wonderbolts.
• Stable Time Loop: "It's About Time" revolves around Twilight receiving a warning from her future self from next Tuesday morning, but she could not finish her thought before she disappears, thus Twilight believes there's some sort of disaster that's going to happen next Tuesday morning and tries to prevent it. When next Tuesday morning comes, nothing happens, and Twilight realized there was nothing to worry about. What follows is the reason behind Future Twilight coming into play: Twilight used a time travel spell to tell her past self to not worry about the future, but she could not complete her thought before the spell wore off, thus Past Twilight freaked out over a disaster that wasn't going to happen.
• Squish the Cheeks: Happens so often that it's become something of a Running Gag. The chances of somepony moving into close proximity of somepony else and squeezing their cheeks are higher than one would expect.
  • Twilight Sparkle: The queen of this trope. Twilight gets her cheeks squished more than almost every other character in the show. Ponies tend to move into close proximity of her face and squeeze her cheeks or press them against their body. Villains tend to put their hands on Twilight as well, also leading to this trope.
  • Pinkie Pie: Pinkie Pie, having No Sense of Personal Space, tends to be the one squishing otherponies' cheeks. She's most likely responsible for a large fraction of the cheek squishing in Friendship Is Magic. She will even squish her own cheeks from time to time.
  • Rarity: Rarity will cup her hooves around a pony's face from time to time. It most often happens with Twilight (As expected), but she might do it to some other characters too.
  • Starlight Glimmer: Guessing since Starlight is Twilight's pupil, it would make sense that this happens to her often too. Starlight is another one of the most prominent characters who gets her cheeks squished by others after her Heel–Face Turn.
  • Discord: Another character who tends to place his hands on ponies' cheeks. He rivals Pinkie Pie in terms of space invasion. Guess who he does it to most.
  • Cozy Glow from Season 8 squishes her own cheeks a lot. It adds to her deceptive cuteness.
• Standard Power-Up Pose: This pose is adopted by some of the Mane Six when they use the power of the Elements of Harmony.
  • When Twilight was transformed into an Alicorn she took this pose when the power entered her.
• Standard Snippet:
  • In "The Best Night Ever", before Pinkie Pie starts changing the musical program, the quartet is playing a very subdued version of the second movement of Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmusik.
  • Ride of the Valkyries during the air race in "May the Best Pet Win".
• Staring Down Cthulhu: Fluttershy has subdued a dragon (who was so large each of his eyes was around the same size as her body) and a cockatrice (whose gaze was turning her to stone as she did so, but still gave up first) by staring them down and scolding them. She's even part of the trope image.
• Status Quo Is God: Every other episode each of the Mane Cast needs to re-learn how to be a good friend. This might be a meta-Aesop, though — that building and maintaining strong friendships takes constant work. It's even Lampshaded in the aesop of several episodes, such as "The Return of Harmony" and "Sisterhooves Social".
  • In spite of saving all of Equestria at least twice, no one outside of Ponyville seems to know them. They're on stained glass windows in the castle, for Celestia's sake! However, they don't seem to make an active effort showing this off.
  • Actively averted starting in Season 5-6. Interestingly, this involved bringing in multiple new sets of protagonists (Starlight and then the Student 6) as the original groups matured and it became less reasonable for them to be put into the same situations.
• Stealth Pun: Hidden several places, including…
  • One of the stealthiest is Twilight's own name. "Twilight... Sparkle".
    • And to top it off, when Lauren Faust was asked if the name was an intentional joke, her response was "It passed legal."
  • In the first episode, "The Mare in the Moon", we can see that Twilight Sparkle (who is more interested in her studies than in making friends) makes her home in a tall, off-white structure (i.e. an ivory tower).
  • When Nightmare Moon was imprisoned in the moon, she appeared as a large dark spot on the moon's surface, and is referred to as "The Mare in the Moon". A dark spot on the moon is known as a sea, or in Latin, mare.^note Yes, everypony knows it's pronounced differently, but still.
    • There's also the more obvious pun behind her name where she's a mare who controls the night, making her literally a Nightmare.
  • In the second episode, "The Elements of Harmony", "The book said when the five are present, a spark will cause the sixth element to be revealed." Spark or Sparkle?
    Nightmare Moon: The spark didn't work!
    Twilight Sparkle: But it did. A different kind of spark.
  • The Wonderbolts are heavily based off of the Blue Angels (and other aerobatics teams), and utilize a winged thunderbolt as their logo. The dark-mirror Shadowbolts used, as their uniform Cutie Mark, a winged skull. A winged skull logo was also used, at one time, by the Hell's Angels. Subtle, but very clever.
  • In "The Ticket Master", when Rarity is ranting about how her fashion will allow her and Twilight to impress all the Canterlot elite at the Grand Galloping Gala, she has literal stars in her eyes.
  • The two male ponies, Snips and Snails, are a pun based on the old adage that girls are made of "sugar and spice and everything nice", while boys are made of "snips and snails and puppy dog tails". Given this show's status as a kids' show, it's probably unlikely that we'll see a boy pony named "Puppy Dog Tails", but the other two can work as names in a fictitious environment.
  • In "Boast Busters", the name "Trixie" is a diminutive of 'Beatrix', meaning 'voyager, traveler', and Trixie is a travelling performer.
  • "Oh, horse apples!" is a double pun - "horse apples" is a nickname for the fruit of the Osage orange tree and a slang term for horse dung.
  • In "Feeling Pinkie Keen", Twilight stops to stand on a crate and lecture Pinkie about why she has a hard time believing in the latter's "Pinkie Sense". Said crate originally had some bars and bottles of soap on it, which means Twilight literally got on a soap box.
  • In "Sonic Rainboom", Pinkie Pie decides to "taste the rainbow" but finds it not to her liking.
    • Rainbow Dash pulls off the Sonic Rainboom and wins the Young Fliers' Competition with it. One might say she passed with flying colours.
  • "You're like the queen of stares!" "You're the Stare Master!"
  • In "Green Isn't Your Color", when Fluttershy is being chased around by paparazzi, one of them is a pegasus with a dollar sign as his cutie mark. Given pony naming conventions, this means his name is probably Money Shot.
  • In "Over a Barrel", we see a train pulled by several ponies. We just saw the pony express.
  • Applejack's story in "The Cutie Mark Chronicles" details her attempt to move to the city to live with her aunt and uncle Orange. The City Mouse/Country Mouse plot is played completely straight, revealing to Applejack that she's nothing like the city folk. It's like comparing Apples and Oranges.
    • Similarly, she says "I'm so hungry, I could eat..."
  • Rarity is a pony who designs clothes. She's a clotheshorse.
  • Rarity owns a female cat named Opal, which is a type of gemstone. In "Return of Harmony", Rarity brings home a large "diamond" named Tom.
  • In "Lesson Zero", Twilight Sparkle shows the Cutie Mark Crusaders her toy, Smarty Pants, who comes with accessories such as homework. It also appears to be some kind of donkey, making it a smart ass.
  • In "Sweet and Elite", when talking to Fancypants, after having mentioned staying at the princess' castle, she places Opalescence into one of her carrier-bags. Why? Because she let the cat out of the bag. (Admittedly not the same bag, but still.)
  • In "Secret of My Excess", Spike goes on a greedy rampage through Ponyville. Part of that includes going to Sugarcube Corner and stealing all the cakes. Pinkie Pie immediately calls out, "How dare you take the cake!" This is a subtle reference to the phrase "taking the cake".
    • In the same episode, Spike's gigantic pile of wildly assorted presents includes a kitchen sink.
  • In "The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000", Pinkie and friends hold a Ticket-Line Campout to be the first to get that season's Sweet Apple Acres cider... in other words, camping in line waiting for the yearly new Apple products.
  • In "Read It and Weep", a hospitalized pony with a crazed expression and straitjacket vocalizes like a dog - making her barking mad. Also, the fact that her cutie mark is a screw makes much more sense when you consider that she's literally a screw loose.
  • In "A Friend In Deed", Pinkie parodies a few lines from the song "Yankee Doodle Boy" (a.k.a. "Yankee Doodle Dandy"). In the musical that popularized the song, the "Yankee Doodle Dandy" was a horse jockey.
    • The song also borrows lyrics from the folk song that inspired it, "Yankee Doodle". What did Yankee Doodle come to town riding on, again?
  • The plot of "MMMystery on the Friendship Express" involves detective work by someone who happens to be pink.
  • The day after "A Canterlot Wedding" — in which Princess Cadance is revealed to be a villain in disguise — aired, a music geek discovered that one of the songs^* (namely, "BBBFF", not the Villain Song as is often circulated) contains a chord progression known as a known as a Deceptive Cadence. And then the song's composer confirmed via Twitter that it was totally intentional.
  • In "Magical Mystery Cure", the song "What My Cutie Mark Is Telling Me" details results of the cutie mark swap. There's very distinctive transitions between stanzas, which appear in jazz and musicals. It's known as a turnaround, which can also mean "the reversal of a situation or circumstances".
  • In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 1", Discord appears in a Four-Star Badass costume. You could say he's... General Chaos.
  • A cutie mark represents who a pony is. So when Starlight Glimmer steals them from the Mane Six in "The Cutie Map", she's comitting identity theft.
  • The twittermites in "Bloom and Gloom" are insects that can generate electricity, which makes them lightning bugs.
  • In "Make New Friends but Keep Discord", Discord's eyes glow green, turning him into a literal Green-Eyed Monster.
• Steampunk: Some of the officially licensed merchandise.
• Stepford Smiler:
  • While Pinkie Pie's smiles are usually sincere, she becomes a major Unstable type in the episode "Party of One".
    • And then becomes a Depressed type in the episode "Pinkie Pride".
  • In "Princess Twilight Sparkle, Part 1" Princess Celestia reveals to Twilight that while she put on a brave face for her subjects, to her, the Summer Sun Celebration was just a bitter reminder that she'd had to banish her own sister after her Face–Heel Turn.
  • Rarity sometimes has shades of this as well, her desire to always appear elegant and graceful sometimes leads her to repress her anger and frustration. "Sisterhooves Social" is probably the clearest example, as she spends the bulk of the episode trying to keep a happy face as her sister causes increasing amounts of trouble for her.
  • In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 2", when Twilight tries to reassure Spike that everything's fine, she forces a big, insincere grin to her face.
• Stereotypical Nerd: "Putting Your Hoof Down" has a stereotypically nerdy pony with taped glasses, moustache, unfashionable mane-cut, bowtie, acne, and robot cutie mark, indicating his interest in robotics. When he buys the last asparagus, which Fluttershy wanted, Rarity tricks him into selling it back to Fluttershy by calling him strong and handsome.
• Steven Ulysses Perhero: Everypony is given a name at birth that will one day reflect their special talent, personality, and/or profession. Characters seem to be pretty Genre Blind to this fact, especially the Cutie Mark Crusaders. Subverted, sometimes, with ponies like Rarity or Pinkie Pie; their names don't completely match their personality, profession, or their cutie mark (the former, while it's true that she had gems as her cutie mark, it seems that in Equestria gems aren't that rare, and the latter, while having the word pink in her name, is almost not feminine at all, and she's not specialized in making pies).
• Sticky Situation:
  • "Fall Weather Friends" features a scene where Applejack cheats by kicking down a bucket harvesting maple sap, causing it to spill onto the trail and gluing Rainbow Dash. It's unusually stretchy, requiring Rainbow to slingshot herself in order to snap the sticky sap.
  • "The Cutie Mark Chronicles": At the beginning, yet another attempt at obtaining their cutie marks by doing stunts results in the Cutie Mark Crusaders covered in tree sap (and according to Scootaloo, this isn't the first time). After cleaning up, Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle both give a bro-hoof to Scootaloo, but the latter still has tree sap on her hooves, and they end up stuck together.
  • "Ponyville Confidential" has Snips and Snails getting their rears stuck together by bubblegum. When this ends up on the newspaper, they willingly demonstrate it for their classmates (despite still having patches of fur missing from the earlier incident) because they are such class clowns.
    Sweetie Belle: Snips and Snails and bubblegum fail.
  • The Changelings in "A Canterlot Wedding" have the ability to capture their victims in a sticky goop, trapping Celestia inside a cocoon, subduing the royal guards, and gluing Cadance to the floor.
  • In "Make New Friends but Keep Discord", the Smooze's slime is (thankfully) not corrosive, but it is extremely adhesive. We see Rainbow Dash getting entirely unable to take flight once her hooves are glued to the floor by it, despite her efforts. Also, Fluttershy and Tree Hugger end up stuck against a glass window by the slime, Tree Hugger upside-down (not that she seems to care...).
  • In "It Isn't the Mane Thing About You", Pinkie Pie kicks off the episode's plot by spraying the inside of Sugarcube Corner with super-sticky celebration string. Rarity gets a brush stuck in her mane, and Pinkie ends up using a crowbar to detach the Cake twins from the floor.
  • In "The Hearth's Warming Club", the slime covering Spike as a result of the sabotage of the Hearth's Warming Tree proves very sticky, Twilight having to try several times with her telekinesis to pull it off of him.
• Stock Footage: There's a lot of detail going into the animation for this show, so the animators sometimes reuse objects in different episodes, sometimes leading to a continuity error. For example, in "The Ticket Master", Fluttershy imagines herself befriending Canterlot's wildlife, including various colored jays. Those jays can be seen in a birdhouse near Fluttershy's home in "Party of One", when she and Rainbow Dash are Stereo Fibbing to Pinkie Pie. Also, Twilight Sparkle and Pinkie Pie's gala dresses are in Fluttershy's closet at the beginning of "A Bird in the Hoof". Sometimes done for laughs, like Rarity's Hollywood-fainting twice in a row in "Bridle Gossip".
• Stock Scream: The famous Wilhelm scream has heard a few times throughout the series. See the trope entry for examples.
• Stock Sound Effects:
  • From "A Bird In The Hoof", Fluttershy's high-pitched whimper as Philomena's ashes fall through her hooves is identical to her whimper when she met Twilight Sparkle in Part 1 of the pilot.
    • While trying aromatherapy, Philomena's sneeze is the same as Rarity's sneeze during "Griffon the Brush-Off".
  • And Rarity's "Wahaha!" which has so far been heard in "Mare in the Moon", "Sonic Rainboom", and the "There's a Pony For That" commercial.
  • Pinkie Pie's "MMM nom nom" eating sound effect is used several times, including more than once in "A Bird in the Hoof".
  • The squeaky rubber duck noise whenever anypony smiles really cutely. It's been used before in the Beast Wars episodes "Coming of the Fuzors" (Part 2) and "Crossing The Rubicon" as well as the SpongeBob SquarePants episode "Bossy Boots", and it's also been used in the Doritos Crash the Super Bowl 2013 finalist Road Chip.
    • Spike will make a similar sound when he's physically abused.
  • And the crowd-wide gasp that can be heard when Twilight manipulates Fluttershy. Can be heard just before Photo Finish falls backwards.
  • Pinkie Pie's gasp when she first sees Twilight in the first episode gets used again throughout the show whenever a gasp is needed.
    • It's also played backwards when Fluttershy inhales before letting loose with a too-quiet "Yay" in the cold open of "Sonic Rainboom".
  • One of the roars that the Ursa Minor makes is a stock sound effect that was also used for the Battlelord in Duke Nukem 3D.
    • For that matter, the Hydra from "Feeling Pinkie Keen" makes a lot of Doom noises.
  • Granny Smith angrily yells her groggy "Soup's on!" from the first episode when Scootaloo clips her on her scooter.
  • The screech Rarity unleashes upon losing her diamond-encrusted purple ribbon in "Lesson Zero" is the same one she lets loose with in "Swarm of the Century", when she finds herself trapped in Carousel Boutique as parasprites actively devour it and everything inside.
  • The clang of Sweetie-Belle running into a metal fan during "Show Stoppers" is the same sound used for impacts with metal in Half-Life 2 (most noticeable when using the crowbar). This has not gone by unnoticed.
    • In the same episode, we have one of the "impact with wood" sounds from the same game when Apple Bloom trips and falls flat on her face on the way to the stage. It later appears in "The Cutie Mark Chronicles" when Scootaloo hits a tree branch, and again in "Sisterhooves Social" when Applejack slams a door with her hoof. Guess the show's staff has been killing some headcrabs lately...
  • The sound used when Applejack slams Pinkie's head in a door and when Spike beats up some Diamond Dogs was also used when killing a guard dog in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater.
  • Another one is the treadmill-contraption Applejack runs within in "The Last Roundup". The sound it makes as it spins is somewhat common in video games where sliding doors are made out of stone. Blood and Unreal are two examples.
  • The sound of Spike's quill on parchment in "Dragon Quest" is the exact same sound of a note being jotted down in both the Penumbra and Amnesia series.
  • In Part 2 of "The Cutie Map", when Night Glider kicks down a door, it bounces on the floor, making the sound of a wooden object hitting the ground in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. trilogy.
  • And in "Sonic Rainboom", we have the stock whinny, as Pinkie Pie experiences the aftereffects of her little taste of the rainbow concoction.
• Storm in a Teacup: In "Lesson Zero", Twilight Sparkle goes mad with worry when she realizes she's forgotten to send her weekly friendship report to her mentor Princess Celestia. This culminates in half the town of Ponyville fighting over Twilight's favorite childhood toy after a botched attempt to "make a friendship problem". It is only revealed at the very end that Princess Celestia wasn't expecting a friendship report every week.
• Story Arc: Although the episodes besides the two-part pilot are self-contained, as Hasbro wanted, "The Ticket Master", "Suited For Success", and "The Best Night Ever" form a three-part story arc about the Grand Galloping Gala. The writers were also able to slip in some Continuity Nods throughout the first Season.
  • Conversely, the second Season doesn't really have much of a story arc, which was unfortunate because there was no opportunity to set up Twilight's relationships with Shining Armor and Princess Cadance in advance. However, Season 2 did have three episodes about Twilight becoming paranoid ("Lesson Zero", "It's About Time", and "A Canterlot Wedding") and only being properly so once, but there's no attempt to connect them together.
  • Season 3 has the mysterious book glimpsed at the end of "The Crystal Empire" 2-parter that reappears in "Magical Mystery Cure". If you squint at "The Crystal Empire", "Too Many Pinkie Pies", "Magic Duel", and "Magical Mystery Cure" just right, an arc about the progression of Twilight's magical training might be discerned, but it probably wasn't planned as such.
  • The opener of Season 4 kicks off a season-long adventure arc with the mysterious box from the Tree of Harmony and the search for the keys thereto. The six keys take the form of objects that the main characters are given when they demonstrate the importance of their Element to someone else, culminating in the two-part season finale, "Twilight's Kingdom". There's also a secondary arc about the Equestria Games being held in the Crystal Empire which spans the third and fourth Seasons, starting with "Just for Sidekicks" & "Games Ponies Play" and continuing through "Flight to the Finish", "Rainbow Falls", and "Equestria Games".
  • The arc theme for Season 5 is be "Cutie Mark Magic". The season premiere is about a unicorn who can forcibly remove a pony's cutie mark (and the pony's special talents along with it), and in the fourth episode the CMC have nightmares over whether they would hate their own cutie marks and the talents that come with them.
    • Speaking of which, that episode was the conclusion to the trilogy of stories where Princess Luna would help the Cutie Mark Crusaders in their dreams — "Sleepless in Ponyville", "For Whom the Sweetie Belle Toils" and "Bloom & Gloom" — which played out Once a Season for three consecutive years.
  • Season 9 features a final major arc where Celestia and Luna announce their eventual retirement and make Twilight their successor, and a Legion of Doom is assembled of Tirek, Chrysalis, Cozy Glow and led by the legendary Grogar, and the Mane 6 must defeat them once and for all.
• Storybook Opening: The first shot of the premiere opens with a book with a unicorn head and Twilight's narration of the story of Nightmare Moon. The final shot is a group shot of the Mane Cast, which zooms out to show that it is a photo in the book, as the same book closes.
• Straight Man and Wise Guy: Twilight Sparkle is the Straight Girl to Pinkie Pie's Wise Gal.
• Strange Minds Think Alike: Spike's nickname for Rainbow Dash in "Bridle Gossip" was "Rainbow Crash". It turns out to also be her nickname while she was in Pegasus flight school.
  • Also, Spike and Princess Celestia have remarkably similar thought patterns, such as trying to get Twilight to lighten up and make some friends in the pilot, and encouraging the Mane Cast to hang out together as a group at the Grand Galloping Gala rather than splitting off to do their own things (since the Gala itself is kind of a boring party anyway).
• Strictly Formula: In the first Season, characters learn a valuable lesson about friendship pretty much every episode (usually after one of the characters causes a problem or conflict by acting ignorant or confrontational), and then Twilight Sparkle writes a letter to her mentor Princess Celestia summing the lesson up in a few sentences. As of "Lesson Zero" other characters can write letters to Celestia as well, and a few episodes involve no closing letter at all, but An Aesop about friendship is still always present.
  • A side formula is always present in episodes involving the Cutie Mark Crusaders, with the three fillies trying to take up some new activity or talent in order to earn their cutie marks (with inevitable failure). Usually this causes some problem or embarrassment that merges into the Friendship Aesop formula above.
• Strong as They Need to Be: More or less a rule of the show, with power levels not remaining consistent even within a single episode.
• Stumbling in the New Form: In "Growing Up is Hard to Do", the Cutie Mark Crusaders magically turn from foals between the ages of seven and twelve into grown mares. When they try to hoof bump, they miss, not used to having adult-sized forelegs.
• Stylistic Suck:
  • When the Cutie Mark Crusaders enter a talent show in an attempt to earn their cutie marks, they each cover roles more suited to one of the other fillies. The result is, well...this. They end up winning "best comedy act" as it had the audience laughing so hard, and pretended it was all part of the act. You even hear Scootaloo's voice actress start to crack up at the end of one of her lyrics.
  • Pinkie's Wonderbolt Rap in "Testing, Testing, 1 2 3" is deliberately made to look like a cheesy 90's-era rap video, completely with reduced audio/video quality, a different aspect ratio, and VHS artifacts.
  • Spike's rendition of the Cloudsdale anthem in "Equestria Games".
• Subverted Rhyme Every Occasion: Sweetie Bell's song in "Hearts and Hooves Day". Hilarious In Hindsight for fans of Friendship is Witchcraft.
• Sudden Anatomy: Applies to pony eyebrows not just on an individual-case basis but as a rule. They don't normally have them, but automatically generate some whenever they wear an expression that needs them. Also unlike the usual case, it's so subtle and looks so natural that it's easy to miss.
• Sudden Soundtrack Stop: In "The Best Night Ever", Pinkie's disco music cuts off suddenly when Rarity is hit in the face with a layer cake.
• Sugar Apocalypse: Discord gives Rainbow Dash a vision of Cloudsdale crumbling away to convince her to throw the game that they're playing. Possibly Subverted in that we never personally see whether it was actually happening or not. Played straight when Discord throws the rest of Equestria into chaos after the "game" ends.
  • Literally the case: the first signs of Discord's Sugar Apocalypse are cotton candy clouds that make sweet chocolate rain.
  • Much like Applejack's vision of the mane ponies' friendship ending leaving out critical details, he allows Rainbow Dash to end the game by making the wrong choice - taking the wings. He lets her assume that staying in the game will doom Cloudsdale while in fact it is taking the wings and leaving that would do so as Equestria falls into permanent chaos.
• Sugar Bowl: The show takes place in a world where ponies can move the clouds around to make it rain or shine, and plants and animals need to be told to grow or hibernate. Thus, changing seasons is a large community project. The inhabitants are so accustomed to this way of life that the Everfree Forest — an untamed wilderness where animals take care of themselves, plants grow on their own, and weather occurs independently of pony intervention — is considered spooky and unnatural. And again, there are monsters aplenty.
• Superhero Episode:
  • "The Mysterious Mare Do Well" features the eponymous masked superhero. It's actually Twilight, Applejack, Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie taking turns wearing the suit.
  • The Season 4 episode "Power Ponies" features the Mane Cast getting sucked into an enchanted comic book and taking on the roles of the members of the eponymous superhero group.
• Surprise Multiple Birth: In "Baby Cakes", Mrs. Cake gives birth to a son (Pound) and a daughter (Pumpkin). While Mr. Cake takes it in stride, his employee Pinkie Pie and her best friends, who have come to meet the babies, are surprised that the Cakes have had twins.
• Swamps Are Evil:
  • Perhaps not evil, a such, but definitely dangerous and unpleasant. Swamps have shown up in multiple episodes, and they rarely contain very pleasant things.
  • Froggy Bottom Bog from isn't so bad. Just avoid the giant aggressive hydra that lives there.
  • In "Somepony to Watch Over Me" there's a fire swamp, dotted by random bouts of fire and inhabited by a Chimera. There's also a much less evil swamp beyond that, where ponies have peacefully settled.
  • "A Health of Information" features two swamps, an unnamed wetland at the beginning ,and the Hayseed Swamp where Mage Meadowbrook used to live. Both are full of trees whose pollen spreads Swamp Fever, a sickness that causes afflicted ponies to transform into trees of the same kind that grows the flowers. The Hayseed Swamp is also home to hives of flash bees, extremely aggressive and electrogenic insects.
• Swirling Dust: In the fourth season's finale, "Twilight's Kingdom – Part 2", Twilight Sparkle gets powered up with the magic of three other alicorns. She's so overloaded with power that just getting ready to fly causes this effect.

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