My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic / Tropes T to Z

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:

T

• Taken for Granite: Used on occasion.
  • In "Stare Master", a creature called the cockatrice has the ability to turn any living thing to stone with just one look.
  • Discord was stoned by Celestia and Luna a thousand years before the series, but was freed by the Crusaders arguing with each other when near him. He was restoned by the Mane Six at the end of "The Return of Harmony", but was freed again and for good as of "Keep Calm and Flutter On". In "The Ending of the End", he turns Cozy Glow, Queen Chrysalis and Lord Tirek into a statue.
• Talking Is a Free Action:
  • Subverted when Rainbow Dash lets her reputation as a hero go to her head. She insists on making grandiose speeches before she actually does anything to save ponies in danger, until they ask her to just save them already. Ironically, the request to stop screwing around took far longer than the remainder of her catchphrase.
  • In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 2", after Twilight surrenders her alicorn magic to Tirek, Tirek immediately grows to monstrous proportions and should be able to easily squash the heroes... yet Discord has plenty of time to explain his sincerity in giving the medallion to Twilight as a sign of their friendship.
  • Subverted in "All Bottled Up". After Twilight and her friends solve clues in an escape room and find the key to open the door out, they break out in song about their friendship and how they work together. Turns out they didn't turn the key yet, and by the time they do, they missed the escape room record by two seconds because of their musical number.
• Tall Poppy Syndrome:
  • Played With in Season 1's "Boast Busters", where Twilight thought that her friends' dislike of Trixie was due to her magic, and feared they'd hate her when she used her own power to stop an Ursa Minor. Ultimately averted, as the others' dislike of Trixie was due to her grandstanding, not her power.
  • Played straight in Season 5's premiere, "The Cutie Map", where Starlight Glimmer governs her village under the philosophy that all social strife comes with people lording their talents over others and, thus, everyone should be knocked down to the same level of mediocrity.
• Technicolor Magic: Magic is typically represented through a colorful glow manifesting around the magic-users' horns or eyes and around the thing being affected; magical attacks usually take the form of colorful blasts or beams.
• Teen Genius: The Mane 6, in their respective talents.
  • Twilight Sparkle is quite possibly the most powerful unicorn to ever exist.
  • Applejack is the undisputed strongest mare in Ponyville, due to her job bucking apples.
  • Rainbow Dash is likely the best and fastest flyer in Equestria, probably even better than the Wonderbolts themselves.
  • Rarity's dresses amaze fashion veterans.
  • Fluttershy can calm any animal, be it a raging dragon to the freakin' Cerberus.
  • Pinkie Pie makes just about anyone smile, and throws the best parties in Ponyville.
• Teleport Spam:
  • When Twilight confronts Applejack in an episode, rather than simply following her as she carries her apple baskets from tree to tree, she repeatedly teleports right in front of her face.
  • Discord is also quite a fan of this.
  • Twilight does it again throughout "Lesson Zero". Note that in both that episode and "Applebuck Season", she's using it to actually spam. Well, talk a lot, anyway. (She also uses a tactical version in "Luna Eclipsed" to block a panicking Pinkie.)
  • In "Secret of My Excess" she uses it externally on a fleeing Spike, repeatedly teleporting him to her as he tries to run; it ends when Pinkie Pie is teleported unexpectedly.
  • Seems to have all but perfected the technique by "The Crystal Empire". Winking several times in and out in sequence to a musical number while striking different poses. Would she ever actually need to fight somepony directly...
  • In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 2", Twilight makes good use of this during her fight with Tirek. Every time he manages to pin her down, she just teleports out.
• Temporarily a Villain: The show uses this every now and then, typically with mild examples.
  • Spike the dragon is normally good, but his envy in "Owl's Well That Ends Well", at the attention Owlowicious is getting, drives him to do some very morally objectionable things, such as planting a fake mouse corpse to frame Owlowicious for killing the mouse. ^note When called out on this, he runs away from home, tries to hide in a cave that happens to belong to another dragon... a dragon who seems like he's about to kill or at least severely hurt Spike... but Spike ends up getting saved, by Owlowicious. And then Twilight Sparkle reassures Spike he still has an important place in their social circle, prompting Spike to apologize for what he's done. By the end of the episode, Spike is pretty much one of the good guys again.
    • A more threatening temporary villainy occurs during "Secret Of My Excess", when his greedy dragon nature gets out of control. When Rarity, not knowing he is the same Spike, talks about how generous Spike was, he feels ashamed of what he has become and immediately reverts back to his old self.
  • Twilight Sparkle has this in "Lesson Zero", when she drives herself insane trying to find a friendship problem (to the point where she deviously creates one herself). Her Apple of Discord plan, however, goes horribly right.
  • Spike again becomes a kind of villain in "Just For Sidekicks", as he abuses his position as pet minder (even tormenting Angel, and not loosening his tail, which would be hurting him), all due to the fact that he wants to get more gems for a cake he was making because he ate the first batch himself (and then, over the course of the episode has to give away almost the entire new batch - which could be viewed as karma).
• Tempting Fate: Shows up a few times:
  • In the very first episode, Twilight Sparkle brushes off Princess Celestia's advice to make some friends, saying "The fate of all Equestria doesn't depend on me making friends". By the next episode it's clear that actually yes, it does.
  • Probably the best, and most lasting, example, also from the pilot: "All the ponies in this town are crazy!" Over the course of the season, all the members of the Mane Six have at least one Freak Out.
  • In "Look Before You Sleep", Twilight ends up lecturing Applejack and Rarity after their bickering spoils Twilight's first slumber party, and ends her rant with "Is there anything else that could possibly go wrong?!" The thunderstorm outside swiftly worsens, and a lightning bolt strikes a nearby tree and threatens to send it crashing into Twilight's house.
    • The Japanese dub has a line that's an even bigger example, as Twilight snaps: "If you two are going to fight, I'd rather be struck by lightning!"
  • She refuses to believe any of Pinkie Pie's predictions in "Feeling Pinkie Keen", and ends up on the receiving end of every one of them.
  • In "Owl's Well that Ends Well", Spike causes trouble because of his jealousy over Owlowiscious the owl, and ends up running away from home after getting a lecture from Twilight. As he trudges, alone and feeling unloved, through the Everfree Forest, he asks himself "Can it get any worse?" It almost immediately starts raining.
  • "The Best Night Ever" pretty much starts with this, with the Mane Six indulging in a Crowd Song about how all their hopes and dreams for the Grand Galloping Gala are about to come true. Naturally, they don't. Then near the end of the episode, Celestia and Twilight Sparkle step into the main hall and find that the others have laid waste to the entire party. Thinking she's been utterly humiliated in front of her mentor, Twilight remarks "At least things can't get any worse..." A moment later, a horde of wild animals stampedes into the room with an insanely frustrated Fluttershy on their heels.
  • Happens when the mayor gives a speech about Applejack, calling her "a pony of the utmost trustworthiness, reliability, and integrity. Ponyville's most capable and dependable friend: Applejack!" But then... she doesn't show up on time.
  • In "A Canterlot Wedding", the song "BBBFF" contains the line "Never had a single fight." I'm going to give you one guess as to what happened by the end of the episode.
  • "Magical Mystery Cure" begins with Twilight singing "Can things ever go wrong? I don't think that they will." She doesn't even get to finish the song before disaster strikes.
  • In "Filli Vanilli", Rarity says, "It is wonderful when a plan comes together without any sort of drama, isn't it?" Cut to the next scene, in which the plan unravels and much drama ensues.
  • In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 2", Tirek cites the medallion as useless since it reminds him of Scorpan and his siding with the ponies. Take a wild guess what ends up being the final key to unlock the box and seal his defeat.
• Terrible Trio:
  • The Diamond Dogs from the episode "A Dog and Pony Show" are led by such a trio. Word of God says their names are Fido (the hulking one), Rover (the tall, skinny one) and Spot (the short one).
  • Diamond Tiara, Silver Spoon, and Babs Seed are this for the majority of "One Bad Apple". Later subverted when Babs has a Heel–Face Turn.
• Tertiary Sexual Characteristics: The male ponies' manes are less inclined to be particularly frilly or oddly-colored, but that probably has to do with personal grooming.
  • As far as secondary characteristics go, males have shorter eyelashes and more angular muzzles and narrower ears than females. Some are taller and stockier, but not all; for example, the exposed muzzle is the only way to determine Wonderbolt (and Shadowbolt) genders. That's about it, unless the animators really want you to be sure.
  • In "MMMystery on the Friendship Express", it is revealed that Rarity, at least, wears false eyelashes. Not that you would ever mistake her for male. Also, she's been seen applying mascara to Fluttershy.
  • There are also several prominent cases of false TSCs.
    • Lots of casual observers think Rainbow Dash is The One Guy because it's exactly the sort of art style where a blue character would generally be Color-Coded for Your Convenience. Additionally, her mane (though still long) is a lot closer cropped than the rest of the Mane Six, her voice is about the same timbre as Spike (who is a boy), and she is tomboyish in behavior.
    • Zecora has the more angular muzzle of male ponies. Casual viewers may mistake her for a male until she speaks.
    • One notable exception to the rule is a young pony who has the muzzle of a colt and the long eyelashes of a filly in "The Cutie Pox". He can be seen in the episode's Cold Opening as the bowler with the bowling cutie mark.
• That Reminds Me of a Song: The show actually averts the previous trend of having the ponies burst into song Once per Episode. Cloudcuckoolander Pinkie Pie is often the designated song starter, and had this Lampshaded with her first cue in "Elements Of Harmony, Part 2":
  Pinkie Pie: When I was a little filly and the sun was going do-o-o-own...
  Twilight Sparkle: Tell me she's not...
  Pinkie Pie: The darkness and the shadows, they would always make me fro-o-o-own...
  Rarity: She is.
  • Later, in "Dragonshy", Twilight asks the others to help Fluttershy across a crevasse, leading to Pinkie instantly bursting into a (very silly) song about jumping across crevasses. This only serves to shorten Twilight's rapidly fraying temper.
  • Lampshaded again in "Bridle Gossip":
    Pinkie Pie: And that wicked Enchantress, Zecora, lives there doing her evil... stuff! She's so evil, I even wrote a song about her...
    Rainbow Dash: Here we go...
    • Later in the episode, when Pinkie Pie has lost her ability to speak due to a curse, she asks Fluttershy, who has been cursed to have a comically deep voice, to sing it for her.
  • It's something of a running gag that although sometimes other ponies will join in on the rare occasions that someone other than Pinkie Pie starts a song — to the point of an outright Crowd Song in "The Best Night Ever" — no-one will ever join in on Pinkie Pie's songs, and the usual result is the other ponies watching in something between fear and bewilderment.
  • Another lampshading in "A Friend In Deed". Part of Pinkie's "checklist" to making a new friend is "sing random song out of nowhere".
    • And the trope's played with in her initial song in that episode, which manages to draw in half of Ponyville (averting the usual course of things) and would perfectly offset the plot if there were any plot yet. As all we see before the song turns out to be a warm up to the song, the sheer magnitude of the performance comes entirely out of nowhere.
  • "Over A Barrel" manages to deconstruct this, when Pinkie's performance makes the situation worse. Twice. The first, the buffalo chief and the sheriff say that that was the worst performance they have ever seen, and the chief decides the next day they will stampede. When they do, the chief has second thoughts, and looks like he's not going to go through with it, until Pinkie starts singing again, which causes him to go through with it.
  • In "Rarity takes Manehattan", Rainbow Dash expresses her dislike for this trope. A musical number begins shortly after.
• Theme Naming: Multiple Pegasus warriors seem to be named after iconic World War II British planes (Spitfire - Supermarine Spitfire, Commander Hurricane - Hawker Hurricane, General Firefly - Fairey Firefly, etc).
• Theme Tune Extended: Included as a sing-along on the DVD The Friendship Express. Parts of it have also been used for the game Discover the Difference, the Twilight Sparkle Animated Storyteller toy, and The Friendship Express' trailer.
• Theme Tune Roll Call: Subverted. The cast is introduced by element instead of by name, except in the Theme Tune Extended and in one toy commercial.
• "They've Come So Far" Song: The Season 3 finale gives us "Celestia's Ballad", where Celestia sings about how Twilight has come such a long way in the context of telling her it's time to fulfill her destiny.
• Threaten All to Find One: "The Hearthswarming Club" has the Young 6 held over after a prank causes a huge mess at the school, and told to clean the common areas where the mess is. Twilight says they'll be held until someone confesses, and she, Spike, and Rainbow Dash call each one individually to ask them about their involvement and/or knowledge of the prank. The students begin to describe their various Hearth's Warming celebrations, but they also begin to fight among themselves, fearful they'll miss their families and celebrations if the guilty party doesn't come forward. Upset at how the fighting doesn't go along with the spirit of the holiday, Gallus, the gryphon, explains that it was him because he has no family to return to and just wanted to spend a bit of time with his friends before they left. Twilight overhears this and thanks him for his confession, then tells him he'll still need to stay over the holiday. The others offer to stay as well so that Gallus won't be alone during the holiday season.
• Thick-Line Animation: Though unlike the recent glut of cartoons that use this style, this show has a unique way of going about it, using colored outlines instead of plain black.
• Third-Party Peacekeeper:
  • "Lesson Zero", Twilight keeps trying to invoke this trope, because she is desperate for a "friendship lesson" that she can write Princess Celestia about, thinking that failing to send a letter will mean that she's not doing her tasks correctly. Unfortunately, all of the "friendship problems" she wants to solve are nothing of the sort, and she goes a tad bit off the deep end until Celestia herself arrives to undo some mayhem Twilight had caused.
  • Starlight has a budding friendship with Trixie, which is ruined for a time when Trixie says irritating Twilight was "just a bonus" (words Starlight had used before in her villainous days). When Trixie is about to attempt a magic trick she can't pull off without Starlight, with a strong possibility of dying, Twilight tells Starlight that she believes Trixie's remorse and on stage self-deprecation are genuine, and urges Starlight to give Trixie a second chance, something Trixie had accused Twilight of denying her. Trixie and Starlight renew their friendship.
  • Downplayed in another episode. Two young fillies are fighting, and Twilight gets caught in the crossfire. We're shown the end of a lecture where Twilight recites one of her own friendship experiences to them, and convinces them to patch up their friendship, which then inspires her to have copies of the Friendship Journal made for all of Equestria.
• Third-Person Person:
  • The Great and Powerful Trixie.
  • Rarity, when she's "in the zone, as 'twere".
  • I, Photo Finish, am this trope!
  • Spike, during his growth in "Secret of My Excess", devolves into this and Hulk Speak.
  • Iron Will, who manages to cause Fluttershy to briefly become one, after one of his seminars.
• This Cannot Be!:
  • Discord is absolutely stunned when he realizes (far too late) that not only have the Mane Cast broken free of his Mind Rape, but rekindled their friendship to the point they can activate the Elements Of Harmony again... which are presently aimed at his face.
  • Same happens to Nightmare Moon when the Elements' blast hits her.
  • Trixie declares "This can't be!" in "Magic Duel" after Twilight Sparkle seemingly wields greater power than her.
  • In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 2", Tirek shouts this when he sees Twilight and the Mane Six with their new Rainbow Power, unable to understand how they are empowered again after draining their magic.
• This Is No Time for Knitting: In the episode "Swarm of the Century" Pinkie Pie spends most of the episode gathering musical instruments while Twilight and the rest of her friends are trying to get rid of the parasprites. Just after Twilight's last desperate attempt to get the parasprites to stop eating all the food backfires spectacularly and she gives up in despair, Pinkie saves the day by leading the parasprites away from town with a one-pony band.
• This Is Unforgivable!: Said several times in the Japanese dub.
• This Means War!: Anytime Punctuated! For! Emphasis! is invoked it is pretty much interchangeable with this trope. Celestia's reaction towards Discord also qualifies.
• Throw the Dog a Bone:
  • A Running Gag in the episode "The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000" involves Rainbow Dash not being able to get a cup of the Apple family's homemade apple cider because they always run out by the time she reaches the booth, or in one instance because she spilled the cup (leading her to shove the dirt it was spilled on into her mouth). She finally gets a mug at the very end of the episode.
    • And she gets the mug from none other than Pinkie Pie, who up until that point, had been hoarding mugs of cider and unintentionally rubbing it in Rainbow Dash's face about how good the cider tasted.
  • In "Equestria Games", Spike, a character who's often the butt of many jokes, is celebrated as a hero by the denizens of the Crystal Empire, and gets to save the day there a second time after going through two humiliating experiences.
• Tie-In Novel: Several storybooks (many of them packed with toys) and magazine stories (not all of which are in English). Only around half of the magazine stories are Novelizations.
• Title Drop:
  • In "Elements of Harmony", The Reveal of the sixth element shows that Friendship is indeed Magic.
  • In "Call of the Cutie", Cheerilee refers to her students as "my little ponies".
  • In "Fall Weather Friends" during the Running of the Leaves.
    Pinkie: You know, Spike, despite the name, the leaves don't do any of the actual running. That's left to my little ponies.
  • In "Stare Master", the Cutie Mark Crusaders drop the episode title.
    Scootaloo: You're like the queen of Stares!
    Scootaloo, Apple Bloom, and Sweetie Belle: You're the "Stare Master"!
  • In "The Show Stoppers", Twilight addresses the Cutie Mark Crusaders twice as "my little ponies".
  • In "A Bird in the Hoof", Princess Celestia refers to Fluttershy as "my little pony".
  • Title drops occur frequently during "The Best Night Ever".
  • Cheerilee, Celestia, and Discord all refer to her class (in the case of the former) and the Mane Six (the latter two) as "my little ponies" in "The Return of Harmony".
  • "May the Best Pet Win!" has it as the last line of Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash's duet.
  • The Mayor drops the title when naming the town's new hero in "The Mysterious Mare Do Well".
  • The nurse pony also uses it in "Read It and Weep"
  • After being reformed by Fluttershy, Discord actually says "Friendship is Magic" when prompted by Fluttershy.
  • A rather harsh one in "Rarity Takes Manehattan":
  Rarity: Oh, why look! There's our friend Rarity going down in flames! Isn't friendship MAGIC?!
  • Cheese Sandwich in "Pinkie Pride".
  Cheese Sandwich: "Oh, it's no coincidence my little ponies, my cheesy sense was a-tinglin'."
  • The spell Spike finds for Rarity is called "Inspiration Manifestation".
  • By Discord once again in "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 2"; he notes that Fluttershy actually taught him that friendship is magic.
• Title Theme Tune: My Little Pony, anyway. The theme begins with the traditional "My Little Pony" theme and transitions into a zippier, fast-paced theme.
• Token Houseguest: The bakery Sugar Cube Corner houses the Cake family, consisting of Mr. and Mrs. Cake and their twins Pound (colt) and Pumpkin (filly)... as well as Pinkie Pie, the goofy party planner/baker.
• Tom Swifty: In "Fall Weather Friends", Pinkie Pie says she is "your official p-ie in the sky announcer" for the Running of the Leaves.
• Tome of Eldritch Lore:
  • A Comic Book of Eldritch Lore in the Season 4 episode "Power Ponies", which transported the Mane 6 and Spike to Maretropolis and turned them into costumed superheroes until defeating The Maniac.
  • In "Inspiration Manifestation", the book that Spike finds with the spell to help Rarity is hidden in the old Everfree Castle, hidden by a secret wall, behind a locked gate, and on a rock stairway that immediately crumbles when the book is removed from the pedestal. It's made of stone and even has spikes sticking out of the cover.
• Tongue on the Flagpole: In "Hearth's Warming Eve", Scootaloo and some other poor anonymous filly get their tongues stuck to a huge (Christmas-tree-sized) candy-cane prop.
• Took a Level in Badass: Rainbow Dash was altered from earth pony in the previous toy line to Pegasus for this series, and revels in every second of it.
  • Fluttershy got one in Season 2. So far, she was able to resist the embodiment of chaos attempting to corrupt her until he resorted to brute force, and seemingly wrestled a bear (turned out to be a massage, but that still took some strength). Note that she was already a Badass Pacifist capable of giving angry/disappointed lectures to shame the monster of the week into submission, in combination with her infamous Stare; this was merely expanding her repertoire.
  • It looked at first as though the future-Twilight of "It's About Time" had gotten one (due to her spiky mane, eye patch, scar, ripped black bodysuit, etc.), but the differences in her appearance were just coincidental results of her trying frantically to evade the "disaster" that she assumed had caused her future self to look like that.
• Too Long; Didn't Dub: Most dubs leave character names (even where this contradicts earlier translations of previous MLP series, e.g. Pinkie Pie remaining Pinkie Pie in the French dub instead of becoming "Rosarot"), Cutie Mark, and My Little Pony in English. Possibly the most extreme example comes from the Turkish dub, which leaves the entirety of Pinkie's "Cupcakes" song entirely untranslated.
  • Then there's the Chinese dub... None of the songs, including the opening, are dubbed. Nearly all of the names are changed in this case though.
  • The Japanese dub does translate most of the songs - but leaves the songs "Winter Wrap Up", "Art of The Dress", "Becoming Popular", the "Heart Carol", and "Love is in Bloom" in English with Japanese subtitles.
• Too Upset to Create: Rarity suffers this twice:
  • Shown in a Yet Another Christmas Carol plot in "For Whom The Sweetie Belle Toils" when Luna shows Sweetie Belle what the consequences of her actions in sabotaging Rarity's headpiece for Sapphire Shores will be if she doesn't fix things. Namely the headpiece falls apart when Sapphire tries it on during a dress rehearsal, Rarity loses her credibility due it, obsesses over the mistake to the point she won't even speak to her friends anymore and ultimately stuck in a fetal position while her dress shop falls into ruin.
  • Happens again in "Inspiration Manifestation" though this time due to Rarity not designing a cart for a puppeteer properly and getting chastised for it. Spike finds her in the dress shop suffering Heartbreak and Ice Cream, which prompts him to help her gain her spark back via an ominous-looking book he finds in the Castle of the Two Sisters.
• Toon Physics:
  • Mostly with Pinkie Pie, who has no problem popping out of places she shouldn't be able to (including inside a mirror), although some of the other ponies have their moments as well.
  • Pegasi can hover in the air as long as their wings are flapping, and any cart they are harnessed to will also hover or follow the pony without any drag, inertia, or gravity effects. The wheels can even turn despite not being in contact with any surface. Commonly held Fanon says that these abilities are part of inherent pegasus magic. "Twilight's Kingdom" confirmed that pegasus flight is a magical ability.
• Toy-Based Characterization:
  • Twilight Sparkle is such a huge nerd that her favorite childhood toy (shown in "Lesson Zero") was Smarty Pants, a stuffed donkey who "even comes with her own notebook and quill, for when you want to pretend she's doing her homework!"
  • Thorax is an uncommonly gentle and pacifistic changeling, as opposed to the rest of his race who are vicious predators. "To Change a Changeling" shows that when he was a grub, he liked to play quietly and gently with his dollies, while all the other grubs loved nothing better than tearing apart training dummies.
• Tracking Spell:
  • From Season 5 onward, the "Cutie Map" — the magical table at the center of the throne room of Princess Twilight Sparkle's new castle — is a powerful artifact that can project a map of the whole of Equestria. It then detect "friendship problems" anywhere by summoning members of the Mane Six (and later, Starlight Glimmer and Spike) through their cutie marks, projecting a floating image of said mark over a location. The specific ponies summoned are the best suited to solve whatever friendship problem is afoot.
  • In "Shadow Play, Part 1", another function of the map is revealed. When Twilight Sparkles concludes that they'll need artifacts belonging to the Pillars of Equestria to bring them back from Limbo and reads again Star Swirl's journal for a clue, a glow appears above the Cutie Map — not from any input on the part of any of the Mane Six. Then, images of the five missing artifacts (the six one being said journal, already in their possession) are seen floating, and settle on their respective locations above the map of Equestria. Quite handy at this point in the story, but since the map is directly linked to the Tree of Harmony, which (as confirmed by the next episode) has very strong ties to said Pillars, it is justified.
• Trailers Always Spoil: A recurring problem for the series, especially when combined with Spoiled by the Merchandise, which is also often in effect.
  • During the two-week hiatus leading up to "Slice of Life", several teasers and commercials of the episode were released, in total showing over five minutes of footage from the episode, including shots from its ending. With the episode being the usual 22 minutes long, writer M.A. Larson commented that they might as well have just shown the episode itself for all they were giving away, and actually asked fans to avoid the teasers so they would enjoy the episode more.
  • Rainbow Rocks ended up showing the first twenty minutes or so of the film in total across its previews and teasers, and is only 73 minutes long. Friendship Games included the scene of Twilight releasing her magic and being overwhelmed by it in the first trailer, and merchandise advertising Twilight's Superpowered Evil Side "Midnight Sparkle" had been around for months. Fans easily put two and two together and what should have been a twist reveal was ruined.
  • A particularly infamous case happened with a Discovery Family promo for Season 8, where the second frame of the trailer shows Spike with wings, flying. The rest of the trailer has no problem casually spoiling that Sunburst is called by the map for an adventure with Starlight and Queen Chrysalis is back, even showing her disguise for good measure to make sure the reveal is fully ruined. In the span of less than fifteen seconds, the promo uses clips from four episodes, and spoils three of them.
  • Also from Season 8, an episode summary of "School Raze - Part 2" described Cozy Glow's role as the Big Bad. The character in question hadn't even appeared yet by the time said summary was revealed, and when she appears, she seems to be a One-Shot Character.
• Trailer Spoof: One of the trailers for Season 9 opens with billowing snow and the font from the Game of Thrones TV series, playing off the hype for that series before revealing it's an MLP trailer.
• Tranquil Fury:
  • Celestia, the (very) few times she's gotten angry. It's... surprisingly unsettling, particularly when she reprimanded Twilight in "Lesson Zero".
    • Less surprising when you notice the common thread. Steal her cake, she smiles. Steal her pet phoenix, she smiles (and asks the guards to search). But you threaten her little ponies... well, the words "duck and cover" come to mind.
  • Fluttershy, as mentioned elsewhere.
• Transformation Sequence:
  • In one episode the Changelings do this.
  • In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 2", the Mane Six assuming their Rainbow Power forms is accompanied by this.
• Transmutation: The story being told in "A Hearth's Warming Tail" features the main character, Snowfall Frost, attempting to transmutate a lump of coal into gold. She almost succeeds until the ringing of bells out in the street breaks her concentration.
• Trash the Set:
  • Applejack's barn goes through this with astounding regularity.
  Raze this barn, raze this barn, one, two, three, four!
  • In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 2", Golden Oaks Library is blown up.
  • In Part 1 of "The Beginning of the End", The Tree of Harmony is destroyed, along with the elements.
• Treehouse of Fun:
  • Twilight and Spike live in Ponyville's Golden Oak Library, a four-story structure built inside a tree. It has a Mad Scientist Laboratory in the basement, for some reason.
  • The Cutie Mark Crusaders get their own tree house in "The Show Stoppers".
• Triangle Shades: Worn by Princess Cadance in one of the non-matching pictures from the printable Princess Cadance Perfect Match activity.
• Trickster Mentor:
  • Princess Celestia. She sets up the episode's whole source of conflict, runs away when anything dangerous happens, or chooses not to be a Deus ex Machina even when she could easily solve everything on her own so often that fans have dubbed her "Princess Trollestia".
    • In the series premiere, she knows full well about the prophecy predicting that her sister, whom she imprisoned, is about to escape and wreak havoc. Rather than explain things, or even do anything herself, she just tells the protagonist to "stop reading those dusty old books" and make friends, and is absent for the rest of the episode. Incidentally this is exactly what needs to be done, and as she notes later, she never explicitly said that the prophecies were wrong.
    • She knows that Twilight has six friends, but gives her only two tickets to the Gala, forcing her to agonize over who to give the extra ticket to. Though there is some controversy over whether she might have honestly expected Twilight to just go with Spike. In the end Twilight returns the tickets saying she can't go if she can't bring all her friends. Celestia replies, "Why didn't you say so in the first place?" and gives her more tickets. Apparently the lesson was: You never had to choose.
    • She sits back and watches as Rarity plummets to her doom, letting Rainbow Dash have a Big Damn Heroes moment. The fact that Rarity was put in this situation due to the heat of the sun, and the fact that Celestia controls the sun, leads some to suspect that she caused the whole incident to begin with.
    • She invites the main characters to a snooty, boring, rich-people party and hopes that they'll cause a disaster and liven up the event. She outright admits as much after said scheme goes precisely as she planned.
    • She intentionally tricks overzealous citizens into filling her teacup so that it overflows. This is an undeniably harmless joke though, and seems to have been made as an attempt to break the tension her presence caused to her overly-nervous subjects. Though she still clearly enjoys it.
    • She takes her old, dying pet bird to a party, then runs away and leaves it there with Fluttershy, resident animal lover, failing to tell her the bird is actually a phoenix whose time for rebirth has nearly come. Again, the debate as to whether this was purposefully done or simply a case of absentmindedness continues. Although, Fluttershy did kind of steal the bird on her own instead of just asking the Princess what was wrong with it, and it did seem like Celestia genuinely didn't know where Philomena had gotten to.
    • She seems remarkably nonchalant when she discovers that Twilight has traveled all the way to Canterlot and broken into the Canterlot Library of Magic's Star Swirl the Bearded Wing at the crack of dawn - all while sporting a torn jumpsuit, a wildly unkempt mane, a scar on her cheek, and an eyepatch. Almost as if she suspected what was going on but didn't want to interfere with Twilight learning a valuable lesson... Of course, Twilight being Twilight, Celestia may have assumed she was simply doing extra studying... in the capital city several miles away, in what is probably the largest and oldest library in Equestria. Twilight isn't just an A+ student, she's the neurotic A+++++++ student.
    • She sends Twilight a valuable, uncompleted spell from one of the most important mages of all time, in hope that Twilight could fix it, suggesting that she knew very well what was wrong with it... and doesn't bother giving her a heads-up that it completely changes the destiny and lives of all her friends. Her justification was that by saving her friends and completing the spell, she was able to ascend to become an alicorn princess, too.
  • Discord in Season 4's "Princess Twilight Sparkle" two-parter. He knew all along what was causing the Everfree Forest to run wild, but kept silent because he didn't want to "rob Twilight of an important lesson about being a princess". He is also the one who suggests they speak to Zecora for guidance, and convinces Twilight to return to her friends, albeit by insinuating her new title has gone to her head.
    • Unlike Princess Celestia though, Discord's method of "teaching" seems to be more just messing with Twilight and then teaching a lesson about friendship as a justification/excuse to do so. In his other Season 4 episode "Three's A Crowd", the friendship lesson Twilight learned was completely unintended on his part, because he faked being sick in order for Twilight to prove she's friends with him by looking for a cure, and was disappointed when he didn't completely wreck Twilight's day with Cadance.
    • Discord seems up to this again in "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 1", manipulating Twilight towards trying to open the chest from the Tree of Harmony.
    • Deconstructed in Season 9, where he's revealed to have disguised himself as Grogar, having brought three past villains as a final test for Twilight, only for them to drain his power.
• Troll Fic:
  • Cupcakes (Sergeant Sprinkles), seems to have been written solely for shock value and lulz. Surprisingly, it's an aversion! The author, Sergeant Sprinkles, later stated that he wrote it on a whim just to see who would read it, and was surprised by how infamous it was (he admits that it's terrible, so the Troll Fic part may have been played straight after all; it's hard to tell). He has written several other decent, non-horrific stories. (None of which will ever be as successful as Cupcakes, of course.)
  • The Spiderses is a more straightforward example, being the Friendship is Magic equivalent to My Immortal.
  • Prince Martin Willis is another trollfic (hopefully) that has gained some traction within the Brony community for its extremely coarse subject manner and practically illegible format. Dramatic readings can be found on Youtube.
  • Pattycakes is this by Word of God. It's well-written and most characters (with the notable exception of Psychoshy) are at least show-accurate on the surface, and this somehow makes it worse.
  • Cheerilee's Garden, a gory Dark Fic that makes Cupcakes look tame, has some of its horror defused by the opening author's note, which declares that it was written just for the hell of it and shouldn't be taken seriously.
  • Twillight Sparkle's awesome adventure is clearly a parody of bad fanfics; most of the cast are either flanderized or wildly out of character, the plot has more holes than a wheel of swiss cheese, and an original character who just happens to share the author's name winds up stealing the limelight and becoming the Nominal Hero. Of course, it hangs so many lampshades on its shortcomings that the joke is obvious.
  • Dakari-King Mykan briefly attempted to release non-Starfleet MLP fanfics that were likely intended to troll fans of the show by ending after the first chapter with no intention to continue. It didn't work.
  • A great PMV troll vid is this one set to "Best Song Ever" (the Jon Lajoie one, not One Direction), itself Stylistic Suck. It too has deliberate repetition, as well as non-existent lip syncing and large blank gaps in between spaces.
• Trophy Child: This seems to be the case with Diamond Tiara's mother, Spoiled Rich. In the episode she was introduced in, "Crusaders of the Lost Mark", it was revealed that Diamond Tiara's Alpha Bitch status was largely due to her mother putting her under extreme pressure to be perfect and above everyone else, while teaching her that anyone not of their status was to be looked down upon. She tells Diamond Tiara to "always think of your social standing" and berates her for making, what she considers to be, mistakes.
• The Troublemaker: Pinkie Pie and Discord split the difference on this one.
  • Pinkie Pie once thought it a good idea to use a magic pool to make copies of herself to spend more time with her friends. She discovered quickly though that she didn't get the enjoyment of doing those things, and now Ponyville had been overrun with dozens of Pinkie Pies.
  • Pinkie Pie's habit of being Innocently Insensitive often has her able to exacerbate any social anxiety Fluttershy might be feeling, such as reminding her of the huge crowds before a singing performance.
  • Discord has been known to troll Twilight on her paranoia of him spending time with her friends because "It Amused Me", and once, he pretended to be sick when Twilight was trying to spend time with her sister-in-law, Cadence, by having her care for him in his time of need (complete with Musical Number). He does get karmic payback at the end when he becomes sick for real.
• Troubling Unchildlike Behaviour:
  • The Cutie Mark Crusaders engage in some relatively dangerous activities without any adult supervision for the sake of finding their cutie marks.
  • "The Cutie Mark Chronicles" has Applejack travel all the way to Manehattan and back to the Apple family farm in Ponyville all by herself.
• Truck Driver's Gear Change: In the OP itself, as if hammering home the fact that this won't be your usual MLP.
  • Happens all over the place in the songs ("Pony Pokey" works in four of them, for example).
• True Companions: The Mane Six and the Cutie Mark Crusaders.
• Twitchy Eye: Used almost as often as Quivering Eyes, usually when somepony is undergoing Sanity Slippage.
  • In "Swarm of the Century" Twilight Sparkle audibly snaps and develops a twitchy eye when she sees the Parasprites eating Ponyville because of a spell she cast. In "Feeling Pinkie Keen", she develops a Twitchy Eye and evolves into Rapidash when Pinkie tells her that the Hydra wasn't the doozy she predicted.
  • In "Suited for Success", Rarity earns one of these when she learns the famous fashion designer Hoity Toity is going to be attending her fashion show, and seeing the (tacky and overdone) dresses she made for her friends. She does it again at the end, when Hoity Toity agrees to sell her fashions at his shop, and proceeds to place a big order.
  • Twilight briefly does this while worrying about whether Princess Celestia will approve of her friends in "A Bird In The Hoof".
  • Spike's eye also twitches in "Owl's Well That Ends Well". Friendship Is Magic gets a lot of this.
  • In "Party of One", Pinkie Pie goes crazy when none of the other ponies want to come to her party, and holds a tea party with inanimate objects complete with Creepy Circus Music and eye twitches.
  • At the Grand Galloping Gala in "The Best Night Ever", Fluttershy develops a Twitchy Eye, Evil Laughter, and Dramatic Thunder when none of Canterlot's creatures want to be her friends.
  • Twilight does this repeatedly after going nuts in "Lesson Zero".
  • In "Inspiration Manifestation", as more of the tome's power takes hold, Rarity begins doing this.
• Tyop on the Cover: Target's Canterlot Twilight Sparkle Animated Storyteller talking doll includes a set of four Novelizations of the first four episodes of the show, with the one based on "Friendship is Magic, Part 2" titled The Magic of Frienship.

U

• Unconventional Food Usage:
  • In "Maud Pie", it's shown that Pinkie and Maud like to exchange necklaces made of rock candy. Pinkie eats the ones Maud gives to her, but Maud keeps the ones Pinkie gives to her in a drawer because she doesn't care much for candy.
  • In "Owl's Well That Ends Well", Spike uses ketchup as fake blood when he's trying to make it look like Owlowiscious killed a mouse. Unfortunately for him, Twilight walks right in on him and becomes quite angry.
  • In "Party of One", during Pinkie's Sanity Slippage, she pretends that several inanimate objects are her party guests. Among them are a bucket of turnips she calls Mr. Turnip and a bag of flour she calls Madame LeFlour.
  • In "Baby Cakes", Pinkie Pie notices that dumping flour on herself always quiets the Cake twins down, so she does this to stop their wailing when they're having a bath. At the end, when Pinkie Pie emotionally breaks down from the stress of babysitting them, the twins pour flour on themselves, too. She admits that's Actually Pretty Funny.
• Unexpected Kindness:
  • In "Bridle Gossip", the Ponyville citizens (except Twilight at first) are all suspicious of Zecora because of her strange mannerisms. The ponies fear she's a witch who cooks ponies in stew and eats them, and the ponies mistakenly believe that Zecora has cursed them when they all have strange maladies. Then they think Zecora is going to make stew out of Apple Bloom, but as it turns out, she's been trying to make a cure for their ailments and Apple Bloom has been helping her. They all apologize for assuming the worst.
  • In "Party of One", the others have been avoiding Pinkie Pie, causing the latter to mistakenly believe they don't want to be her friend anymore and she loses her sanity. She sees that they've set up a party and is furious, thinking that they're setting up a going-away party for her. They reveal to her that it's really a surprise birthday party. Since Pinkie has forgotten that today's her birthday, she becomes happy again and realizes they do want her around after all.
  • In "For Whom the Sweetie Belle Toils", it is revealed that during Sweetie Belle's fifth birthday party, the partygoers became tired of waiting for her and had more fun with Rarity. Sweetie Belle walked right in on them just as one kid said they didn't need her around and she thought Rarity was trying to upstage her on purpose. In the present day, Sweetie Belle finds out during her dream that Rarity was only trying to keep the guests from leaving because she didn't want Sweetie Belle to be sad. This gets Sweetie Belle to realize just how wrong she was to resent Rarity.
  • "Crusaders of the Lost Mark" gives us a huge on from Diamond Tiara, who undergoes a Heel–Face Turn after being shown kindness by the Cutie Mark Crusaders, whom she'd done nothing but torment up to that point. But the CMC discover her Freudian Excuse, her demanding, abusive mother, and treat her with kindness. She, in turn, defends the CMC to her mother after she calls them "blank flanks", a slur Diamond Tiara had used herself in the past, but now acknowledges as hurtful and mean. She is also the first to tell the CMC that their cutie marks are beautiful.
• Unexpectedly Dark Episode: The Two-parters, such as "Friendship is Magic"^note (wherein Nightmare Moon tries to make night last forever; dire when you consider the implications to plants), "The Return of Harmony"^note (wherein Discord temporarily manages to spread a fair bit of chaos and damage the mane characters' friendships with each other), "A Canterlot Wedding"^note (wherein Chrysalis disguises herself as Princess Cadance, then imprisons the actual Cadance in a cave, to marry Shining Armor and use his love to power a changeling invasion), and "The Crystal Empire"^note (wherein King Sombra, a tyrant who formerly enslaved said empire, is about to return) involve scenarios much more dire than those of most of the show's episodes. Among those two-parters, though, "Friendship is Magic" is considered milder than the other three.
  • The trend just kept going, as subsequent two-parters ("Princess Twilight Sparkle", "Twilight's Kingdom", "The Cutie Map", "The Cutie Re-Mark", "To Where and Back Again", and "Shadow Play") are even darker.
  • The infamous "The Mean 6" from Season 8. Where to start? Chrysalis comes back. She attempts to exact her revenge on Starlight by making fake clones of the ponies to seize control of the Elements. The clones end up intertwining with the real ponies' camping trip, unintentionally tricking them into thinking their friends have gone bad, sparking a fight which nearly destroys their friendship. The episode itself is even set in a dark environment, and is the thirteenth aired and produced. To top it all off? Once the clones get to the Tree of Harmony, the Elements quickly recognize them as fake and destroys them, and the way they do so is not very pretty. Boom.
• Unexplained Accent: Rarity's transatlantic accent plays with this. Given her parents' and sister's New York accents, and the North Plains accent common to Ponyville residents, hers is clearly an affectation intended to make her sound more sophisticated; and has a tendency to drop under times of great stress or excitement. Similar, but more British-leaning versions can be heard from some of the upper-class Canterlot ponies.
• Unicorn: One of the three main pony types. Two of the Mane Six were originally unicorns.
• Unique Moment Ruined: Twilight Sparkle gets hit with this in the Season 7 episode "Once Upon a Zeppelin," where she and her family take a zeppelin-cruise as a way of getting away from her royal duties so they can spend some quality time together. Twilight's been especially looking forward to witnessing the rare Northern Star passage which takes place at sunset, but due to getting repeatedly and unwillingly roped into fulfilling a lot of events for fans thanks to the machinations of Iron Will, by the time she finally manages to get away, she's just missed out on seeing the Northern Star. Not helping matters is the fact that the rest of her family, who got to see the star's passage, start gushing to her about how incredible it was; at that point Twilight snaps.
  Twilight: Oh, yeah, the cruise ponies are happy, my family is happy, even Iron Will is happy. You know who isn't happy? ME!
• Uniqueness Decay: Lauren Faust had intended for Celestia and Luna to be the only alicorns. The introduction of Cadance and Twilight's ascension after she left makes them not-so-unique anymore^note something she has expressed dismay over, though it's been stated that they're still special in that they're the only ones of the four who are The Ageless.
• Unknown Rematch Conclusion: "Fall Weather Friends" revolves around Applejack and Rainbow Dash competing to determine who is the better athlete between the two of them. Rainbow Dash wins the most events in an "iron pony" competition, but after Applejack objects that Rainbow has an innate advantage in some of the events due to the latter being a Pegasus, they decide to settle the matter once and for all in a marathon footrace. The race eventually devolves into the two of them pulling dirty tricks on each other, delaying them both until they wound up tying for last place. At the end of the episode, they reconcile their grudge and decide to re-run the race fairly, but the credits roll right after they get started. Their rivalry is still going strong as of "Castle Mane-ia".
• Unknown Rival:
  • Throughout "The Mean 6", the ponies are completely unaware of Chrysalis' presence and Evil Plan, and were also unaware that she made mean doppelgängers of them, instead thinking they themselves behaved mean and rotten to each other out of nowhere.
  • Twice in Season 9. Firstly, the mane characters were unaware of Grogar's presence, and they were also unaware that all the preparations being ruined during the last Summer Sun Celebration were caused by their past foes to distract everypony from catching them from sneaking into the Canterlot Archives to steal an instruction book on Grogar's Bewitching Bell. The former of these becomes subverted when it's revealed that Grogar was Discord in disguise, and he freed the villains to test Twilight on her bravery and confidence before her coronation.
• Unmoving Plaid:
  • The Ursa Major's pelt is an Unmoving Star Field. While Princess Celestia's mane also flows, the colors on her mane don't flow the same way. And on one occasion, the colours on Rainbow Dash's tail continue to curve smoothly even where the end of the tail is ruffled into a zigzag.
  • In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 2", when Tirek drains Discord's magic, the bolt has this appearance. Of course, since it is pure chaos, it does fit thematically.
• Unsatisfiable Customer:
  • In "Suited for Success", Rarity's attempts to design new dresses for her friends turns them all into Unsatisfiable Customers with vague, tacky, or impractical suggestions which nearly drive her to distraction. After seeing the reception their own designs get, they gratefully accept her original offerings, while for her part Rarity learns that she can't please everypony.
  • In "Inspiration Manifestation", Rarity thinks Claude is this at first, until she is able to satisfy him.
• Unstable Powered Child: Baby Unicorns and Alicorns suffer Power Incontinence, causing them to involuntarily cast spells. This isn't usually that dangerous.
• Unstoppable Rage: This can not be stressed enough: Do not, I repeat, not, I'll say it again, Not, and I'll reiterate one more time, NOT break a Pinkie Promise. Lest ye incur the WRATH! of Pinkie Pie.
  • Push Fluttershy too far, and you will get the tongue-lashing of a lifetime.
• Unusual Euphemism: Being a kid's show, the characters have unique phrases they say in place of swearing.
  Rainbow Dash: (Realizing she's at the rear of the pack after tricking Applejack in "Fall Weather Friends") Oh horse apples!
  Fluttershy: (concluding an angry rant to Pinkie Pie and Rarity) ...when they are throwing their own lives away on pointless pursuits that nopony else gives a flying feather about!
• Unwanted Assistance: The Cutie Mark Crusaders usually receive this response when they try to help other ponies while trying to look for their Cutie Mark.
• Up, Up and Away!: Many pegasus ponies (usually Rainbow Dash) often do this when flying fast.
• Upper-Class Twit: A rather large number of the wealthy of Equestria come off as this. Of course, we don't actually hear what any given high-society pony does besides... being part of high-society, so it's unknown how many of them truly fit this trope, and how many are actually useful to pony society.
  • Prince Blueblood, however, is undeniably a twit. He has absolutely no manners or redeeming features and his high-class living is all but guaranteed to be simply as a result of his royalty.
    • Surprisingly averted in the comics where it's shown that despite everything he's actually a very capable diplomat.
  • Averted with Fancypants, who is a rather nice chap that goes on to reassure Rarity in her fashion abilities.
• The Usurper:
  • Nightmare Moon, who removed her own sister from play to obtain the throne and then some.
  • In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 2", after he finds out that Celestia, Luna, and Cadance have hidden their magic from him, we see Tirek sitting on Celestia's throne. He then sends the Princesses to Tartarus to ensure that nopony can challenge his claim to the throne. Having drained Shining Armor as well, and Shining Armor being a Prince, Tirek thought he had removed the Royal Family completely from power. He assumes his claim as the new King of Equestria is secured for good once he drains Twilight of the Princesses' magic, but his claim is short-lived once he is hit with Rainbow Power, re-imprisoned in Tartarus, and Celestia, Luna, Cadance, Shining Armor, and Twilight are restored to their places as Equestria's true Royal Family and sovereigns.
• Utility Magic: Rarity's magic is mostly useful for things like sewing, and Twilight Sparkle, although she can do more impressive magic, mostly uses hers for things like turning pages and writing. In fact, it's implied that most unicorn magic only works for things like this. Their magic is usually related to whatever their special ability happens to be, but in Twilight Sparkle's case, her special ability is magic, so she can do more.
  • Later episodes make it unclear whether other unicorns are only able to perform magic in line with their talents, or if a unicorn is theoretically capable of any magic, but that most unicorns only know magic that is related to their talents and interests. In the second case, Rarity (or any unicorn) could learn much of the magic Twilight knows, but are simply not dedicated enough to the study of magic itself.

V

• Vanilla Edition: The two pre-Shout! Factory DVD volumes. Neither of them include closed captions, and besides their menu music (a fully instrumental version of most of the theme song), they only contain the following:
  • Celebration at Canterlot: The episodes "The Ticket Master" and "Suited For Success", as well as a letterboxed version of one commercial for the show.
  • Adventures in Ponyville: The episodes "Swarm of the Century", "Sonic Rainboom", "The Cutie Mark Chronicles", and the Family Game Night Season 1 episode featuring Leah's and Sabrina's families, as well as three Hub commercials: one My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic commercial (which can be seen here), one commercial for The Hub itself (clips from which can be seen in this montage), and one Family Game Night commercial.
• Vile Villain, Laughable Lackey: Snips and Snails act comically unintelligent and kiss up to Trixie, who is much more serious than either of them.
• Vile Villain, Saccharine Show:
  • Nightmare Moon, Princess Luna's Superpowered Evil Side created from jealousy and corruption by dark magic, who plotted to overthrow Princess Celestia and bring about The Night That Never Ends. Word Of Faust confirms that this would have killed all life in Equestria.
  • The Parasprites. Although not so much villains as an unrelenting all-devouring force of nature, their consuming pretty much the entirety of Ponyville in the span of a couple minutes is pretty chilling (at least if you look past the humor of the situation).
  • Dragons in the series are, by nature, very territorial gem hoarders whose entire lifestyles revolve around greed; the more they hoard, the larger they become (and in a very short period of time to boot), which will become troublesome to any non-dragons in the vicinity. They are also intelligent, and while some can be negotiated with (such as in "Dragonshy"), others won't hesitate to burn intruders to a crisp (like in "Owl's Well That Ends Well"). The adolescent ones seen in "Dragon Quest" are even worse.
  • Discord seems harmless enough, right? Sure, Celestia is on edge, but he's a pleasant fellow and loves playing games. He's also an omnipotent Reality Warper with a passion for psychological torture, corrupting Twilight's friends into a twisted mirror of their true selves and driving Twilight herself to the brink of the Despair Event Horizon. He celebrates his victory by turning Equestria into a World of Chaos where the ponies are reduced to playthings for his amusement. Indeed he's such a nasty piece of work that his Heel–Face Turn a season and a half later came as a genuine shock.
  • "Hearth's Warming Eve" introduces the Windigos, evil spirits who feed off of hatred and cause deadly blizzards. They drove the original ponies from their homelands, and nearly destroyed Equestria. Moreover, it's implied that they freeze people in a state of hatred but keep them alive so that they can have a continuous food supply.
  • Queen Chrysalis in "A Canterlot Wedding", whose modus operandi is to replace and impersonate individuals, draining their loved ones to increase her own power and put them under Mind Control, before leading her minions in a full scale invasion so they can feed as well and drain everyone. It's implied that Equestria isn't the first land she's done this too, and she's even worse in the IDW comics.
  • "The Crystal Empire" has King Sombra, an evil unicorn who used dark magic to enslave the ponies of the Crystal Empire and make it vanish for a thousand years when Celestia and Luna defeated him and sealed him away. He is never played for comedy at any point, is so feared that the crystal ponies imply that part of their Laser-Guided Amnesia is them intentionally repressing the events of Sombra's rule, and comes this close to killing a main character — a child no less — (before being Killed Off for Real himself, in a first for the show). His return in Season 9, however, paints him as an over-confident, foppish spod, downplaying this trope a little. He did, however, still manage to take over Canterlot all by himself.
  • In "Magic Duel", the Great and Powerful Trixie takes a dive into petty (but still oppressive) evil while under the influence of the Alicorn Amulet. It's not her natural state, but there's still the fact that eldritch artifacts that corrupt ponies in such ways exist at all in such a saccharine franchise.
  • Rainbow Dash's rival in "Wonderbolt Academy", Lightning Dust, is a subtle example. She's probably the closest the show will come to portraying full-blown sociopathy, with her superficial charm (she gets along with Rainbow early on), callous disregard of others' safety (plowing past her teammates and dismissing their plight as them "needing the practice"), astonishing selfishness (getting impatient despite one of the challenges not being a race and only caring about the twister when it costs her the leadership rights despite the twister's going out of control almost killing four innocent bystanders), and smug lack of empathy for Rainbow's understandable anger after the twister incident.
  • Season 4's two-part finale does something nopony expected and brings in a G4 revamp of Tirek, the very first of these to appear in My Little Pony! He escaped from Tartarus, the In-Universe Hell-equivalent and prison for Equestria's absolute worst monsters. To put things in perspective, Discord was merely petrified and kept in Celestia's garden. He has powerful fire magic and he is capable of leeching the magic out of ponies, which includes erasing their cutie mark. He's so terrible that Princess Celestia and Princess Luna feel the only hope they have of bringing him in and re-imprisoning him is to send Discord to capture him.
    • How terrifying and vile is he, exactly? Remember Discord, that Mad God with limitless power, that Manipulative Bastard who was once considered the Satanic Archetype of this show? Tirek turns him into his puppet, and then tosses him aside and leaves him powerless once he outlives his usefulness. Without a doubt, Tirek is the most powerful, monstrous, terrifying villain this show has ever seen.
• Villain-Beating Artifact: The Elements of Harmony, which were needed to defeat Discord and Nightmare Moon in the past, and are needed to do so in the present.
• Villain Episode:
  • Chrysalis is the main focus of "The Mean 6", as it generally revolves around her creating copies of the real Mane 6. While the real ponies do appear, they only get about 14-16 minutes of screentime, and half of it is shared with their clones.
  • "Frenemies" focuses entirely on the villain trio of Chrysalis, Tirek and Cozy Glow, and the Mane 6 are nowhere to be seen (aside from Chrysalis turning into Twilight in one scene to mock her).
• Villainous Badland, Heroic Arcadia: The villains tend to make their bases in decidedly unwholesome places, in contrast to the idealized farmland, green woods, pastoral towns and shining castles of Equestria and the other heroic countries.
  • The dragons, who depending on the individual in question tend to be either villains or simply violent jerks, live in the Dragon Lands, an area of volcanic badlands and jagged rocks bereft of vegetation, crossed by rivers of lava and filled with sulphuric smoke. The actual boundary between Equestria and the Dragon Lands, shown in "Campfire Tales" and "Sweet and Smoky", is very clearly visible: on one side of an invisible line, the land is green and softly hilly and the sky blue and dotted with white clouds; on the other, the land is barren and dominated by jagged rocks and the sky is covered by menacing gray clouds.
    Smolder: The stink of sulfur. Sharp rocks under my claws. *sigh* It's good to be home.
  • In "To Where and Back Again", the changelings are revealed to be based in a barren dustbowl under a yellow sky, housing nothing but rocks and the occasional dead tree. In the center is the hulk of the changelings' hive, a dull grey, hole-ridden cone of thin, gnarled spires and jagged edges that dominates the horizon. This state is explicitly stated to be due to the changelings themselves — once they turn good and stop sucking the love out of everything around them, plant life returns to their land and covers both their lands and the hive itself with lush green growth.
  • In "The Beginning of the End", one of the first things to happen once Sombra destroys the Tree of Harmony and starts to take over Equestria is that, as soon as he leaves the Tree's cave, the sky inexplicably turns a lurid yellow. When he's defeated at the end, the sky is instantly turned back to its normal cheery blue by the World-Healing Wave that did Sombra in.
  • Grogar's lair is in a giant skull-shaped monolith rising from a putrid swamp covered in slime and moss, in the middle of a stretch of flat gray rock.
• Villainous Breakdown:
  • Discord snaps when Fluttershy doesn't play along with his twisted mind games. He drops the Faux Affably Evil act and just brainwashes her with a huffy "Arrivederci!".
    • He actually gets terrified when he realizes he's about to be hit with the Elements Of Harmony. His Faux Affably Evil act dissolves into fear as there's nothing he can do as the attack strikes him. Considering everything he'd done over the past two episodes has just effectively imploded right in front of him, this makes perfect sense.
  • In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 2", Tirek is shocked that Twilight and her friends have magic again and finds himself completely overpowered by them.
  • In "School Daze - Part 2", Cozy Glow loses it when the Young Six restore magic to Equestria allowing Twilight and her gang to escape.
• Virtual Paper Doll: Seven Web Games, though three of them are just alternate versions of previous ones:
  • The Hub's Adventures in Ponyville and Hasbro's Rarity.
  • The mix-and-match game from certain languages' versions of the European McDonald's Happy Studio.
  • The Hub's The Fabulous PonyMaker, Rarity's Bridal Boutique, and The Hub's The Fabulous PonyMaker: Trick or Treat.
  • Hasbro's Rarity's Wedding Dress Designer Game.
• Villainous Face Hold:
  • In the first episode, Nightmare Moon crashes a party and uses her starry mane to hold Rarity's chin up and then hit her whilst mocking the ponies over failing to predict her return.
  • In Queen Chrysalis's debut episode, she holds the brainwashed Shining Armor's face and makes him look at her, whilst she boasts to his fiancée that he will soon be too weak to maintain the magic shield he has put around Canterlot, allowing her army to attack. She does this to Twilight in the same episode, holding her chin up whilst mocking the Mane Six's failure to stop her plan.
• Veganopia: Ponies are exclusively vegetarian, though they still seem to enjoy dairy and eggs. Lampshaded by Pinkie Pie's cabaret performance in Season 1 episode "Over A Barrel".
  • See carnivore confusion for more observations on this apparent contradiction.
• Villain Song: "The Flim Flam Brothers Song", although it's a little more cheery than most.
  • Making up for the cheeriness is "This Day Aria", a duet sung between Chrysalis and Princess Cadance.
• Violence Is Not an Option: In "The Cutie Re-Mark, Part 1" and "Part 2", the villain Starlight Glimmer uses time travel to change the past. Twilight Sparkle gets pulled along with the time travel spell, and tries to stop Starlight by fighting her. But after several failed loops, Twilight realizes that fighting can't work: the side effects of their fight wind up altering the timeline just as badly as Starlight did herself. Twilight only succeeds by showing Starlight the Bad Future her actions are creating, and talking her into giving up her quest for revenge.
• Virtue/Vice Codification: A central theme of the show seems to be a simple model of virtue ethics, where six different Elements constitute the whole of Harmony, and one of the core narrative functions of each main character is to exemplify one of these ideals. Being social virtues, many of these are often de-emphasized or completely overlooked in other contexts, due to the traditional tendency of virtue ethics to place the emphasis on individual excellence of character.
  • Generosity, in other contexts often referred to as charity or self-sacrifice. Personified by Rarity, who only tends to display her sincere affinity for it when the need is most dire. The similarity between her name and "charity" seems likely to be intentional.
  • Honesty, another classic virtue. Can be interpreted in truthfulness in word, but also as integrity of character, and fidelity and reliability in deed. Personified by Applejack.
  • Kindness is a classic virtue, often referred to in other contexts as compassion, and closely related to forgiveness and understanding. Personified by Fluttershy.
  • Laughter. A highly unorthodox virtue. Hardly found in any other context in quite the same form, it nevertheless shares several traits with hope and mirth, both of which appear in some virtue-ethical models; and in one episode, optimism is explicitly linked to it. Personified by Pinkie Pie.
  • Loyalty. A classic social virtue. In some ways related to the traditional value of honor, it can be interpreted both as devotion to one's country and to one's friends. Personified by Rainbow Dash.
  • Magic/Friendship. The central theme of the show. This virtue can be regarded as a mixture of all of the others, as well as a constituent in and of itself of the whole of Harmony. It is the strength of unity that arises from harmonious, joyful relationships with others. A similar notion, albeit with less emphasis on the emotional dimension, in different contexts is that of solidarity. Personified by Twilight Sparkle.
• Visual Pun:
  • Many of the apple trees at Sweet Apple Acres have apple-shaped crowns.
  • "Call of the Cutie" has a scene with a close-up of Apple Bloom, who is feeling depressed, when Rainbow Dash sticks her head into the audience's view:
    Rainbow Dash: Whoa. Looks like somepony's got a dark cloud hanging over her head! Let me do something about that... (The camera pulls back, revealing the dark cloud that was hovering just a couple feet above Apple Bloom)
  • During Rarity's first fashion show in "Suited For Success", Hoity Toity says Rarity's designs were "a piled-on mishmash of everything but the kitchen sink". Cut to Rarity kicking a kitchen sink away behind the curtains.
    • The kitchen sink makes a return appearance amongst Spike's pile of ill-gotten gains in "Secret of My Excess". And among the stuff Sweetie Belle uses to bar Cheerilee from leaving the dressing room in "Hearts and Hooves Day".
  • In "Feeling Pinkie Keen", Twilight stops to give a speech about the difference between magic and the Pinkie Sense — after literally stepping up onto a soapbox that happens to be nearby.
  • During Braeburn's tour of Appleloosa in "Over a Barrel", he points out the horse-drawn carriages, then immediately mentions "horse-drawn horse-drawn carriages" as the camera cuts to several artists sketching out the horse-drawn carriages.
  • A rather brilliant one in "MMMystery on the Friendship Express". The griffon chef uses a Dramatic Spotlight to show off his eclairs, but suddenly he is shown holding a lamp, which he throws away. Why a lamp? Why not a flashlight? Well, it does have a nice shade...
  • Applejack normally has both her mane and tail tied up ... in a ponytail.
  • In "Magic Duel", Trixie turns Spike into a Dragon Ball.
  • In "Keep Calm and Flutter On" Discord sports a second face when telling Fluttershy about how he thinks he's becoming reformed already, implying that he's a two-faced liar.
  • In "Rarity takes Manehattan", Applejack stops under a damaged carriage and lifts it off the ground with her back, so that they can repair the broken wheel.
  • Invoked by Pinkie Pie in the cold open of "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 1".
    Pinkie Pie: (stretching Twilight's lower jaw) Why the loooooong face?
    • Discord as usual. The best being his "ears burning" listening to gossip.
    • Later he shapeshifts into a bird solely for the sake of making a "free as a bird" joke.
    • Cadance sings "Soon will come the day it turns around" while the camera orbits around Twilight.
• Vocal Evolution: Several places:
  • Creator/Ashleigh Ball made some changes to Applejack's voice to make it more distinct from her Rainbow Dash voice.
  • Rarity has gotten more goofy sounding and exaggerated.
  • Fluttershy has become less shy-sounding, also taking on a bit of a goofy tone.
  • Sweetie Belle became less slurred and childish.
  • Applejack's Japanese voice started out higher-pitched during the first four episodes but became deeper around the fifth episode.
• The Voiceless: Derpy appears as cameos fairly often but only speaks twice, first in "The Last Roundup" and then much later in "Slice of Life".
• Voice of the Legion:
  • In "The Last Roundup", Pinkie has this when Applejack breaks her Pinkie Promise.
  • Princess Luna at her Season 2 appearance when she gets angry due to her lack of "indoor voice" (she's running on extremely outdated etiquette where shouting at your subjects is proper.
  • Fluttershy, of all ponies, can have this too when she gets cranky.
    You're going to LOVE ME!!!
  • Queen Chrysalis has this, although a less pronounced version than most.
• Voluntary Shapeshifting:
  • Princess Luna is capable of shifting to or from her Nightmare Moon form at will. She also turns into a thorn and several ponies at once (the Shadowbolts) as Nightmare Moon.
  • The Changelings are a race that are capable of taking the shape of any pony.
  • In "It Ain't Easy Being Breezies", Twilight Sparkle demonstrates a new spell she found in the Castle of the Two Sisters that lets her transform herself and her friends into Breezies in order to help Seabreeze and his friends get home.
  • In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 1", Discord once again demonstrates this power, both for the sake of puns, and to lure Tirek into a trap by turning into a unicorn stallion.
• Vomit Discretion Shot: "Applebuck Season" features a scene with a bunch of ponies who got sick from some poorly prepared baked goods. Pinkie Pie has just enough time to declare them "baked bads" before she begins throwing up. The camera cuts away just before it happens.
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot:
  • Philomena in "A Bird in the Hoof".
    • Genius Bonus: When Philomena is restored at the end of the episode, her beak has a wicked, sharp hook to it—a predator's beak. Of course she would puke up the birdseed, her digestive tract is meant for meat, not plant matter.
  • In "Swarm of the Century", Rarity discovers that this is how the parasprites reproduce.
  • Spike receives mail by gagging, then burping out a flame (in a barfing manner) that forms the message.

W

• Walking Disaster Area: If her one prolonged appearance is to be believed, Derpy Hooves is one of these. She manages to completely tear apart town hall merely through clumsiness, not looking where she's going, and just sitting down.
  • It turns out that Spike is terrible at pretty much everything that doesn't involve books, and he spends most of an episode making Applejack's life difficult.
• Walking Spoiler: For the final season: Grogar is Discord in disguise.
• Wardrobe Wound: In the episode "A Bird In the Hoof", Rarity becomes a nervous wreck at Princess Celestia's luncheon, afraid of anything getting spilled on her pretty party dress.
• Watch Where You're Going!: Happens when Twilight Sparkle and Fluttershy are trying to round up a phoenix, and when Twilight Sparkle teleports as two temple guards close in on her.
• Wave-Motion Gun:
  • The show uses the Power of Friendship combined with an Amplifier Artifact to create a Rainbow-colored beam capable of defeating the most malevolent forces in the world, and clean up the damage.
    • The fandom has nicknamed this the "Orbital Friendship Cannon".
  • There's also the Crystal Heart, the artifact that protects the Crystal Empire by uniting the love and unity of the entire kingdom into a powerful energy wave.
  • In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 2", Twilight's first volley against Tirek is a massive energy beam which completely envelops him, then explodes in the background into a giant mushroom cloud.
    • After being empowered with the Rainbow Power, the Mane Six fire one of these at Tirek, returning him to his weak and frail state and blasting him back to Tartarus forever.
• Weirder Than Usual: In "Feeling Pinkie Keen", when Spike notices Pinkie Pie acting strangely, Twilight gives the standard response of "She's just being Pinkie Pie". Spike watches her for a moment and notes that she's being "Super-extra Pinkie Pie today".
• Weird Moon: The Sun and the Moon can not be up at the same time (see the phases part of the trope page). The moon also functioned as a can for Nightmare Moon. When Nightmare Moon escaped, the Mare in the Moon disappeared off the face of the moon.
• Warp Whistle: Adventures in Ponyville's Places of Ponyville map.
• Welcome Back, Traitor:
  • Celestia welcomes back her little sister Luna after she's defeated as Nightmare Moon after Luna sincerely apologizes. Justified as Luna wasn't entirely well in her head when she tried to overthrow her sister, having become a Mad Goddess until the Elements restored her. And even then, while Celestia forgave her, it takes time for their subjects to do so.
  • In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 2", Discord betrays all of ponykind to the most titanically dangerous threat it has ever faced... and yet Twilight rescues him with the rest of her friends.
    • Towards the end when the Mane Six are having a Group Hug and Discord is nervously waving from off to the side, Twilight uses her magic to pull him into the group, making this trope literal.
• We'll See About That: This is Discord's response to Rainbow Dash's statement that she'll always be loyal to Princess Celestia.
• We Used to Be Friends:
  • The Alicorn sisters Princess Celestia and Princess Luna used to jointly rule Equestria together until Luna became bitter and resentful when their subjects favored Celestia over her, turning her into Nightmare Moon. After Luna is defeated and returned to normal centuries later, however, the two sisters reconcile.
  • Rainbow Dash and Gilda in "Griffon the Brush Off". They used to be childhood friends, but their friendship is broken off after Dash finds out that Gilda has been bullying her other friends behind her back. This bitterness carries over into their reunion in "The Lost Treasure of Griffonstone", though Pinkie Pie proves that Gilda has a heart of gold and helps them make up in the end.
  • Discord attempts to invoke this in the two-part Season 2 premiere "The Return of Harmony" in order to keep them from using the Elements of Harmony against him, using a combination of mind control and mind tricks to get Twilight's friends to behave opposite of their respective elements. He very nearly succeeds in pushing Twilight over the Despair Event Horizon with her corrupted friends, but Twilight overcomes his mind games with help from her old friendship reports and lifts his spell on her friends to take him down.
  • In "Amending Fences", Twilight is shown to have drifted so far apart from her old friends at Canterlot that she can't even remember their names. As soon as this dawns on her, she immediately sets out to fix things. While most of them are willing and eager to reconnect, her closest friend Moondancer wound up holding a deeply seated grudge because Twilight brushed off her one attempt to be more social and then left without saying goodbye, which caused Moondancer to isolate herself in her books and studies much like Twilight herself used to do. After Moondancer finally vents her pent up frustrations at Twilight, the two patch things up.
• Wham Episode:
  • The "Magical Mystery Cure" in which Twilight rewrites an ancient spell, thereby becoming an alicorn & a princess. Sweet Celestia, where do we go from here?
  • "Princess Twilight Sparkle, Part 2" manages to top the above by having the Mane Six relinquish the Elements of Harmony to keep the Tree of Harmony from dying. Nothing Is the Same Anymore, indeed.
  • "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 2": Let us count the ways: Twilight's library is destroyed; Discord's Heel–Face Turn is fully complete; Twilight is dubbed Princess of Friendship; and Twilight is given a brand new castle of her very own, with thrones for herself and all her friends (including Spike).
  • "Crusaders Of The Lost Mark" starts out as a simple story about a class election and then blindsides the audience twice. Longstanding antagonist Diamond Tiara undergoes a Heel–Face Turn, and the Cutie Mark Crusaders finally earn their cutie marks.
• Wham Shot:
  • Twilight spreading her new alicorn wings near the end of "Magical Mystery Cure".
  • In "Crusaders of the Lost Mark", the Cutie Mark Crusaders finally getting their cutie marks.
• Wham Line:
  • Celestia's response in "The Ticket Master" which would've prevented all the trouble from before:
  My dear student Twilight: Why didn't you just say so in the first place?
  • In "The Return of Harmony, Part 1", Discord proves he means business when he has Applejack mentally cornered:
    Discord: When all the truth does is make your heart ache, sometimes a lie is easier to take.
  • Throughout "Lesson Zero", Twilight is terrified that Princess Celestia will punish her should she fail to complete a friendship report by the end of the day. Those familiar with the characters know full well that Twilight is highly prone to overreaction, particularly when it comes to both academics and the princess - who is nothing if not kind, understanding, and fun-loving. Thus, most people watching will expect Celestia not to care about the tardy homework assignment. This turns out to be correct, but Celestia is furious when she sees the mayhem that Twilight's reckless actions have wreaked upon the town, and the timing of her appearance comes as a huge surprise.
    Celestia: TWILIGHT SPARKLE!
  • The first part of the second Season finale, "A Canterlot Wedding":
    Twilight: "Princess Celestia invites you to the wedding between Princess Mi Amore Cadenza and... *gasp* My brother!?"
  • And later in that same episode, when Twilight believes she's messed up after accusing Princess Cadance of being evil:
    Twilight: I'm sorry...
    Impostor!Cadance: You will be.
  • "Keep Calm and Flutter On":
    Discord: You think you can boss Discord around?! You think I'm gonna turn all this back because you say so? Because if I don't I'll lose the one friend I ever had? *gasps in realization of what he just said* ...Well played, Fluttershy. Well played.
  • "Magical Mystery Cure", while a number of people saw it coming due to rather large media coverage, has perhaps the most controversial Wham Line of the series:
    Fluttershy: (to Twilight) Wow... You look just like a princess!
    Celestia: That's because she is a princess.
  • "Princess Twilight Sparkle - Part 2": Twilight discovers what she thought was Luna turning into Nightmare Moon a second time is really a flashback to the night Celestia banished her, upon seeing the original Elements of Harmony:
    Twilight: Are those the Elements of Harmony? But that's how they looked in... the past.
  • In the same episode, she comes up with the only solution to save the Tree of Harmony:
    Twilight: I know how we can save the tree. We have to give it the Elements of Harmony.
  • "Daring Don't", though it's something of a minor spoiler, it still shocked the Mane 6:
    Twilight and Rainbow Dash: A.K. Yearling is Daring Do!
  • For fans at least in "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 1":
    I am Lord Tirek.
  • As well as:
    Princess Celestia: We must rid ourselves of our magic, before Tirek has the chance to steal it from us!
  • For the viewers who have already put two and two together and realized the villain has caused a Make Wrong What Once Went Right plot using Starswirl the Bearded's time travel spell, another of these happens when Twilight views the changed Map of Equestria, revealing exactly what Starlight's meddling has changed (and invoking a Mass "Oh, Crap!" from the fandom):
    The map doesn't even make any sense any more. The Crystal Empire takes up half of Equestria!]
  • "Slice of Life": In a purely meta sense, as most fans would never have expected this character to speak again:
    Derpy: Muffin?
    • Also from the same episode:
    Bon Bon: My name isn't Bon Bon. It's Special Agent Sweetie Drops.
  • "Crusaders of the Lost Mark":
    Diamond Tiara: [to her Mother] They are the Cutie Mark Crusaders and they're my friends!
    • Later in the same episode:
    Diamond Tiara: It's your cutie marks! They're amazing!
    • Then:
    Applejack: [to Applebloom] Oh sugarcube, if Mom and Dad were here, they'd be so proud.
  • "The One Where Pinkie Pie Knows":
    Pinkie Pie: Shining Armour and Princess Cadance are having a baby!
  • "To Where and Back Again Part 2":
    Trixie: How often do Changelings all get hungry?
    Thorax: Actually, I haven't been hungry since I met Spike. And Changelings are always hungry.
  • "A Royal Problem":
    Princess Celestia: Don't worry, Starlight. I know how to handle Nightmare Moon!
    Daybreaker: Yeeesss. But can you handle... ME? [laughs madly as Princess Celestia and Starlight Glimmer look on in shock and terror]
  • "The Perfect Pear", the Apple siblings learn a surprising fact about their own heritage, turning an investigation into the origins of their family's long-standing feud with the Pear family into something far more personal:
    Applejack: Bright Mac and Buttercup? Those are our parents' names!
  • "Shadow Play - Part 1":
    Star Swirl the Bearded: You cannot bring only the Pillars back!
  • "The Hearths Warming Club":
    Silverstream: [After hearing Gallus describe a Griffon holiday] Well, at least you get to be with your family.
    Gallus: No... because I don't have a family.
  • "School Raze - Part 1":
    Cozy Glow: Enjoying yourself in there, Starlight? I'm sorry I had to lock you in, but what else could I do? You were going to ruin all my plans.
  • Twice in "The Beginning of the End - Part 1":
    Celestia: So, after much consideration, my sister and I have decided it is time for us... to retire!
    • Followed by:
      Celestia: Everything you've gone through over the years has been a training program.
• What Happened to the Mouse?:
  • "Inspiration Manifestation": Exactly what did happen to the evil spell after it was driven out of Rarity, since the Tome of Eldritch Lore was (presumably) destroyed? Assuming that breaking the spell didn't destroy it entirely, of course.
    • What of the transformed band, turned into background ponies we've seen before? Are there two Octavias out there, one of which doesn't know used to be a very different, very male pony?
  • In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 2", Tirek's brother is mentioned a number of times, and depictions of him are shown in a storybook, but never makes an actual appearance. Unless Tartarus gives Tirek enhanced longevity, his brother should still be around. Though considering he went back to wherever he came from and there is no easy means of long-distance communication except between Spike and Celestia, they might just not have been able to find him.
    • Where did Owlowicious go after he flew away before Twilight started fighting Tirek? Did he go back to live in Twilight's castle or did he just fly away?
• What Song Was This Again?: Many of the songs are very different lyrics-wise in foreign dubs. The Italian version even wrote a new theme song whole cloth.
• What the Hell, Hero?:
  • The Cutie Mark Crusaders get a few from "Ponyville Confidential", but special mention goes to Big Macintosh, who was actually mad enough to chew them out for humiliating him and Applejack.
  • In "Putting Your Hoof Down", after seeing Fluttershy violently deal with a random tourist pony Rarity and Pinkie Pie call her out on her behavior. Considering her new personality though, it doesn't end well for them.
  • In "A Canterlot Wedding", Twilight Sparkle is suspicious of impostor Princess Cadance's behavior, and after apparently misinterpreting one of her actions, Twilight bursts into the wedding rehearsal and accuses the princess of being outright evil. Her friends all leave without even speaking to her, and even Princess Celestia herself makes it clear she's disappointed. Then it turns out Twilight was right, that Cadance was evil... but she wasn't even the real Cadance. During the Near-Villain Victory, the impostor, Changeling Queen Chrysalis, gives a variation to the rest of the Mane Cast, basically stating that it was their fault for not listening to Twilight at all about her behavior. Applejack was very remorseful about this and apologized to Twilight on everypony's behalf, but she brushed it off, stating that it wasn't their fault seeing as Chrysalis fooled everypony.
  • Fluttershy gives an epic one to her friends in the episode "Keep Calm and Flutter On", after they try to pull such a moment on her, believing that she was ignorant of the actions of Discord, whom Fluttershy had been charged with reforming.
    Rainbow Dash: You see Discord's behind all this, right?
    Fluttershy: Oh, of course I do! Do you all think I'm a silly, gullible fool? (cue the rest of them looking very sheepish and muttering.)
  • In "Inspiration Manifestation", Owlowiscious toward Spike as Rarity begins running amok with the spell, and his insistence that everything's going fine.
    • Twilight also berates Spike at the end of the episode for taking the spellbook from the castle without asking permission. She was pissed.
• Wheel o' Feet: Granny Smith, Photo Finish's helpers, and a few background ponies do this now and then.
  • Hilariously played with in Granny's case; she does it after been tricked into thinking she saw a snake... and then proceeds to walk away very slowly.
  • The "Great and Powerful" Trixie does this when she sees the Ursa Minor come into town.
• When She Smiles: Pinkie used to be a Perpetual Frowner like her family, but the sight of Rainbow Dash's Sonic Rainboom caused her to smile for the first time, and her family does the same when they see the party she threw them.
• Where the Hell Is Springfield?: Characters in the show can speak French, and Fluttershy has mentioned ‘French couture’. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?...
  I think so, Brain, and there's surely enough bears and beavers about, but Sugarcube Corner doesn't sell croissants OR poutine!
• White Is Pure: Rarity, a mare with a pure white coat, is a style-conscious fashion designer who loves being beautiful and hates to be dirty or messy.
• Who's on First?:
  • Used as a Running Gag in "Owl's Well That Ends Well", Owlowiscious' "hoo" is understood as the question "Who?" most of the time.
  • In "Inspiration Manifestation", at first, Spike's conversations with Owlowiscious seem like a reprise of their first meeting but eventually he starts responding to what the owl is saying.
  • "Tanks for the Memories" uses three pegasi trying to get names straight as a reason for Rainbow Dash to prevent winter.
• Wingdinglish: Used inconsistently. In "Swarm Of The Century" we can see a banner with clearly English words, but in "Sisterhooves Social" the posters have their text written in some sort of Latin-like language with a weird font (although still with Arabic numerals). Finally, "Ponyville Confidential" manages to use both conventions in a single episode.
• Wing Shield: In order to save Starlight Glimmer from her nightmare in "A Royal Problem", Princess Celestia has to defeat the dream versions of Nightmare Moon and Daybreaker. While the two villains are busy fighting each other, Celestia uses both of her wings to put a stop to their Beam-O-War and flips her wings to toss their attacks right back at them, vaporizing them from Starlight's dream.
• Wistful Smile: Burnt Oak has a sad smile when Big Mac asks if he can come back and talk about his (presumably) late father, Bright Mac. Burnt Oak is remembering the loss of his old friend, but is happy to share those memories with his friend's now adult son.
  • Both Rarity and Apple Jack have wistful smiles in "Make New Friends But Keep Discord" when seeing Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom in their Gala dresses for the first time.
• With Great Power Comes Great Insanity:
  • In "Magic Duel", Trixie's sanity deteriorates while under the influence of the Alicorn Amulet, the first thing she does after banishing Twilight being to turn Ponyville into a micronation with her as its Caligula, then it comes to a head when she has Snips and Snails drag her chariot across the ground, as she is now so paranoid that she can't trust wheels.
  • In "Inspiration Manifestation", the more Rarity uses the book's power, the more deranged she becomes.
• With Great Power Comes Great Perks: As shown on the trope page's image. Admittedly, it must be hard to sew when you don't have hands. Actually overlaps almost entirely with Mundane Utility as ponies with cutie marks fully utilize their special talents or powers in their everyday tasks.
• Wizarding School: "Princess Celestia's School for Gifted Unicorns", which Twilight enrolled in. She also once mentions that there's a magic kindergarten, but given her mental state at the time, it is unclear if it is real.
• Woobie of the Week: After the end of the fourth season where the main cast obtains their new castle with its map, they are alerted by the map in several episodes to ponies and other creatures in trouble who need to learn a lesson about friendship, and travel to the place indicated to help out.
• The World Is Always Doomed: Threats that will spell doom for Ponyville, if not all of Equestria, are horribly common. A burst dam, choking smog, parasprites, Sombra, Nightmare Moon, Discord, even a full scale invasion of the kingdom... the ponies never seem to get a break. Furthermore, "Hearth's Warming Eve" shows that even in the distant past ponies lived in nigh-constant peril.
  • Subtly lampshaded in "It's About Time", with Twilight immediately assuming that Future Twilight contacted her to warn her of some terrible catastrophe, every other pony easily believing her (at least before she started yet another Sanity Slippage), and in the course of attempting to prevent the disaster that doesn't exist they encounter another potential disaster completely by accident. Said disaster casually reveals that Ponyville is located within walking distance of the gates of Hell, where a huge number of monsters are kept imprisoned solely due to Cerberus's keeping watch on the gate. And apparently he runs off every so often.
  • Outright parodied in the 100th episode "Slice of Life", in which the background ponies are pretty used to the constant attacks, and throughout the episode the Mane 6 are seen in the background fighting whilst everyone goes about their daily lives.
  • In "Gauntlet of Fire", Celestia and Luna casually mention how, in addition to matters of state, they're often busy dealing with some crisis or another.
• The Worf Effect:
  • Rainbow Dash never tiring of recklessly charging straight at big scary monsters and getting swatted out of the sky. Applejack and Rarity often find themselves on the wrong end of this too; all three were soundly thrashed by the Manticore and Trixie in just the first few episodes.
    • "Over a Barrel" had a hilariously straight playing of this, when new character Little Strongheart shows up. How is she introduced? By instantly running rings around Rainbow Dash and tricking her into plowing into a railway sign. The poor girl can't get a break.
  • Twilight Sparkle gets a lot of this, too, in order to prevent her immense magical power from being story breaking. Her powers will function correctly when and only when they are needed in the plot. Otherwise, her spell will end up being useless or make things even worse.
  • Celestia, despite (or perhaps, per this trope) being THE most powerful major character in the series who is treated as a deity (whether she likes it or not), receives this treatment multiple times:
    • The entire series kicks off when Nightmare Moon kidnaps/incarcerates^note there is no word on what exactly she did, but it is best to assume that she took her out somehow her, leading the Mane Six to set out to find the Elements of Harmony.
    • In the back-story, Celestia has been worfed at least once before that, possibly twice. When Discord is released from his prison, Celestia admits there is not a thing she can do against him, and he completely outmatches her, even stealing the Elements of Harmony from a secure cell right under her nose only she can supposedly access.
    • In the Season 2 finale, she gets defeated by Queen Chrysalis fueled by Shining's Armor's love, making it a double Worf Effect, since it was used to show how strong SA's magical power and love were as well.
    • At the start of Season 4, both she and Luna are easily taken out by... vines? Justified, because those vines are the creation of the aforementioned Discord. Worse, in the Season 4 ending, Celestia, Luna, and Cadance, are easily sent to Tartarus by the villain, but only because they had given their magic to Twilight for safekeeping, leaving them powerless and Cutie Mark-less.
  • Discord gets this in Season 3. Despite Celestia saying in the second Season that Discord is more than a match for her, she can somehow cast a spell on the Elements of Harmony to protect them from him despite the fact that he's supposed to be more powerful than she is. Made even more Egregious when we see the Season 4 opener, where Discord is seen as able to physically alter her body (specifically he's seen to remove her tail without even touching her) with her being helpless to do anything about it.
  • Shining Armor himself gets one in the Crystal Empire storyline when King Sombra disabled his horn with black magic.
  • The Wonderbolts swoop in to save the day both in "Sonic Rainboom" and in "Secret of My Excess". So far their "achievement" amounts to cutting a couple of Spike's spikes from the latter.
  • In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 2", just to demonstrate how absurdly strong he has become, Tirek drains Discord's chaos magic once he no longer requires his help.
• Worldbuilding: With the first Season establishing the characters, the second Season is free to focus on this. We've had more trips throughout Equestria comparing societies, a look at their holidays, and even the Creation Myth is touched on at least twice. Not to mention the origins of Ponyville.
  • During the 2012 New York Comic Con MLPFIM Writer's Panel (just before Season 3 aired), the writers discussed wanting to put more of this into the show. Season 3 opens with yet another villain from a millenia ago that enslaved an empire of ponies before being banished by Celestia and Luna.
  • As mentioned above, the Season 4 premiere.
• World-Healing Wave:
  • In "The Return of Harmony, Part 1", Twilight Sparkle tries to cancel out the bizzare weather caused by Discord... it fails... miserably. In Part 2, when the Elements of Harmony are unleashed on Discord, it not only turns him to stone but lets loose a World Healing Wave that restores Equestria to how it was before Discord appeared.
  • Also happens in "The Crystal Empire" when Sombra is defeated.
  • In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 2", after Tirek's defeat, the Mane Six release a rainbow wave which restores the magic of all the drained ponies, including restoring the Princesses' magic and releasing them from Tartarus.
• World of Pun: The show loves puns, especially horse-related ones, both noticeable and stealthy. This especially shows up in the place names and some of the character names, such as Trixie and Granny Smith. Do you also think it went unnoticed that one of the Apple family is named McIntosh?
• World of Snark: Many characters can't resist to slip in a witty remark when the situation calls for it. Rainbow Dash, Twilight Sparkle, Rarity, Spike and Scootaloo do this often, though the rest of the Mane Six, Princess Luna, Opalescence and the other two Crusaders have had their moments as well.
• World Tree: While not as large as the usual instances of this trope, the Tree of Harmony fits. It's where the Elements of Harmony come from, embodying The Power of Friendship. Season 4 concludes with it granting a castle that Season 5 shows is connected to every part of Equestria and can serve as an Amplifier Artifact to break every previously established rule of time travel. It's actions also implies an abstract intelligence and influence that can detect conflict anywhere in Equestria and direct the protagonists to figure out how to solve it, strengthening friendships and therefore everyone's connection to each other.
• Worm in an Apple: In "Sleepless in Ponyville", Applejack tells Scootaloo that she appears "more nervous than a worm in an apple on cider making day."
• Worthless Yellow Rocks: Gems and jewels can come across as this, but that is because one of the mane characters has the power to find them and another major character eats them. For ponies that aren't friends with Rarity and Spike, gemstones have high financial value.
• Would Hit a Girl:
  • Daring Do gets into a Big Ball of Violence with Caballeron's Mooks in "Daring Don't". And Ahuizotl's worshippers try to attack the Mane 6.
  • In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 2", Tirek has no problem with physically manhandling Celestia as well as Twilight whom he throws into a mountain followed by tackling her THROUGH it. When offering Twilight's friends in exchange for the alicorns' magic, the clearly implied bargain is the magic for their lives.
• Would Hurt a Child:
  • The adult green dragon in "Owl's Well That Ends Well" tries to kill Spike after the latter enters his cave uninvited (not realizing it belonged to another dragon) and eats some of his gems.
  • In "Dragon Quest", the adolescent dragons attempt to steal and smash phoenix eggs just for the fun of it, something they're implied to have already done on multiple occasions. When the eggs unexpectedly hatch, their leader decides that they'll take the newborn babies instead.
  • Queen Chrysalis wants to control every stallion, mare, and foal, and King Sombra seems willing to snack on Spike. Being the Tagalong Kid isn't easy.
  • In "Magic Duel", Trixie tormented Snips and Snails quite extensively. They did ruin her life and she was under the influence of an Artifact of Doom at the time.
  • In "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 2", Tirek has no problem holding Spike hostage.
• Wrench Wench: Scootaloo is shown doing mechanical work on a parade float in the episode "One Bad Apple." Later, in "Twilight Time," she's shown developing these skills further under Twilight Sparkle learning how to disassemble and reassemble unicycles and scooters.
• Writers Cannot Do Math: The show has given a few time measurements in moons in the third Season. When converted to months and years, they tend to produce rather odd results. The usage of moon instead of month (which the series has used previously) would indicate that they aren't supposed to be the same thing, but that just raised more questions, most importantly, how long a moon is supposed to be when the lunar cycle is manually controlled.
• Writing Around Trademarks: The inverse of this — Hasbro's desire to give characters names that can be trademarked — is the reason for Adaptation Name Changes, especially in the toyline. Examples include Twist-a-loo, Manny Roar (for the previously unnamed manticore), Diamond Dazzle Tiara, Mrs. Dazzle Cup, Daring Do Dazzle... I'm starting to see a pattern here.
  • It's surprising that the name "Big McIntosh" was able to pass legal, but Lauren Faust's original idea for his name, "Big Apple", didn't. The production team has to be careful with how his name is written: he's referred to as "Big Mac" in dialogue for the show, but never in merchandise because it's trademarked by McDonalds, and the spelling "Macintosh" is never used because it's trademarked by Apple.

X

• Xanatos Gambit: This is how Rainbow Dash was corrupted. Discord set her loyalty to her hometown against her loyalty to her friends. Morton's Fork at its finest: she's gored either way.

Y

• "Yes"/"No" Answer Interpretation:
  • Done twice in a row in one conversation in "The Ticket Master":
    Applejack: I've got apple pie, apple fritters, apple tarts, apple dumplings, apple crisps, apple crumblers, and apple brown betty... uh, the dessert, not my auntie. What do you say there, best friend?
    Twilight Sparkle: *stomach rumble*
    Applejack: Is that a "yes"?
    Twilight: No. No! I don't know who I'm giving the ticket to. And all these favors aren't making it any easier to decide. In fact, I'm less certain now than I was this morning! Aargh! (runs off)
    Applejack: So... that's a "maybe"?
  • "Dragonshy", between one of the ponies and her non-talking rabbit Angel (note that the trope doesn't appear until the last lines):
    Angel: [coughs]
    Fluttershy: Oh, goodness! Are you okay?
    Angel: [coughs]
    Fluttershy: Are you coughing because there's a carrot stuck in your throat?
    Angel: [coughs]
    Fluttershy: Because you need some water?
    (Angel looks exasperated, coughs enormously and lifts Fluttershy's chin to make her look up)
    Fluttershy: *gasp* Because of that giant cloud of scary black smoke?
    (Angel throws a carrot at her head, looking annoyed)
    Fluttershy: I'll take that as a "yes".
  • In "Green Isn't Your Color":
    Twilight: It's the perfect plan! You can't tell anyone about it. Promise me you won't tell anyone?
    (Pinkie Pie makes a long series of gestures that seem to be miming various actions, including digging at the ground)
    Twilight: So... you do promise, or you don't?
    Pinkie Pie: Uhh, yes! Obviously, that's why I (repeats the gestures) zipped my mouth closed, then locked it with a key, then dug a hole, then buried the key, then built a house on top of the hole where I buried the key, then moved into the house on top of the hole. (grin)
    Twilight: Obviously...
  • In "Owl's Well That Ends Well", Spike sarcastically interprets a Rock Bottom + Tempting Fate situation by this model. "Could it get any worse?" (Cue the Rain.) "I guess that's a 'yes'."
• You All Share My Story: "The Cutie Mark Chronicles" reveals Rainbow Dash's first Sonic Rainboom as a filly which earned her cutie mark is responsible for the rest of the Mane Six earning their cutie marks, which they don't realize until years later:
  • Applejack moves to Manehatten to be more like her fancy Aunt and Uncle Orange, but finds it boring; she sees the rainbow from the Rainboom pointing to Sweet Apple Acres, realizing she's truly part of the Apple Family.
  • After falling out of the sky from the race, Fluttershy enjoys company from the forest animals she met until the explosion from the Rainboom scares them away; she then discovers her ability to talk with animals and calms them down.
  • Rarity is upset with her costume choices for the school play and is dragged toward a gigantic rock, which she thinks is a waste of time. But then the explosion from the Rainboom causes the rock to fall and break, revealing it's a giant geode with crystals inside, which Rarity uses as part of the costumes and discovers her true love as The Fashionista.
  • Twilight Sparkle is excited to join Celestia's school, but has to pass an entrance exam; when she keeps failing and believes she lost hope, she feels an earthquake caused by the Rainboom which causes her to perform the spell correctly and go out of control as well. It is then Celestia hires her as her apprentice and she realizes her talent of doing magic.
  • Pinkie Pie was originally a Perpetual Frowner among with the rest of the Pie Family living on a dull rock farm; the sight of the Rainboom appearing in the sky causes her to smile for the first time and get the idea to make her family smile as well, by realizing her talent of throwing parties and making anyone smile.
• You Already Changed the Past: The episode "It's About Time" was essentially this.
• You Are Better Than You Think You Are:
  • The episode "Flight to The Finish", has Scootaloo, a young pegasus who can't fly (a situation that, in fanon, is considered equivalent to a kid being handicapped), getting mocked and bullied for this, and ends locking herself in her room, extremely depressed. Her surrogate Cool Big Sister, Rainbow Dash, gives her a speech after she loses all faith in herself, getting her out of her Heroic BSoD.
  Rainbow Dash: Listen, Scootaloo. Maybe you'll fly someday, or maybe you won't. You're all kinds of awesome anyway. Who's the toughest little pony in town?
  • "Equestria Games"' aesop, and Spike's character arc for the episode, revolve around him learning this.
  • The basic idea behind the Princesses' song to Twilight in "Twilight's Kingdom, Part 1":
  Cadance: But you stand here for a reason,
  You are gifted and you are strong,
  That crown is upon your head because you belong!
• You Can't Thwart Stage One: The two-part episodes fall under this. The heroines can't stop Nightmare Moon from getting free. They can't find the Elements of Harmony before Discord brainwashes them. They can't stop the changelings from launching an attack on Canterlot and defeat Celestia along the way. They can't get the Crystal Heart in its pedestal before King Sombra gets past Cadance's barrier. They can't stop Celestia's and Luna's disappearances and the Everfree Forest beginning to take over Ponyville...
• You Could Have Used Your Powers for Good!:
  • Not mentioned, but the main reason why the Mane Six end up bringing in the Heel–Face Turn-inflicted Starlight Glimmer into the fold in the Season 5 finale — despite her misguided ways, Starlight Glimmer is an incredibly powerful unicorn and with her unhinged and friendless, the Mane Six just couldn't possibly let her go.
  • In fact, what with the general theme of redemption through friendship, this has happened repeatedly throughout the series. Notable examples includes Fluttershy being charged with bringing Discord around in Season 3 - they could've just kept him petrified, but if his powers could be used for good, it'd be of great benefit! In Season 5, even Diamond Tiara demonstrates that when redeemed by friendship, she can use her powers for good - even though that power happens to be a potent talent for manipulation and blackmail. No such thing as Bad Powers Bad Ponies in Equestria!
• You Do Not Want To Know:
  • Twilight Sparkle says this after Spike asks what an Ursa Major is like after an Ursa Minor rampages through Ponyville. The audience, however, knows that the Ursa Minor was towering over every building in Ponyville — and the Ursa Major is several times bigger.
    • And this was the original sketch.
  • Rainbow Dash also says this when she inadvertently refers to Pinkie Pie's mental breakdown.
• You Mean "Xmas": The show has featured multiple holidays celebrated in Equestria which seem to correspond roughly to Earth holidays:
  • Hearts and Hooves Day: Valentine's Day.
  • The Summer Sun Festival: Summer Solstice.
  • Nightmare Night: Halloween.
  • Hearth's Warming: While the actual celebration is more of a cross between Thanksgiving and a Founder's Day, its trappings are definitely meant to invoke Christmas.
  • Strangely Zigzagged by the record album It's a Pony Kind of Christmas, which uses the names Christmas, Santa Claus and St. Nicholas, but all of the songs are rewritten to remove any other religious references. Songwriter Daniel Ingram says it's non-canon.
  • Winter Wrap Up: The Vernal Equinox, when winter ends and spring begins.
• Younger Mentor, Older Disciple: Following "Marks For Effort", Applebloom, Scootaloo, and Sweetie Belle become tutors for Twilight's School of Friendship. Keep in mind that they are still fillies and the school has students of various ages. This means that the Cutie Mark Crusader are not only the youngest of the school staff, but they are also younger than some of the students attending the school.

Z

• Zany Cartoon: Normally it's fairly down to earth, but the show has a tendency to leap headlong into this territory whenever Pinkie Pie is involved.
• Zombie Apocalypse: Conversed by Spike and Twilight in "Bridle Gossip". "Not likely... but possible?" Poor Spike.
  • Actually done in "28 Pranks Later", even though it is revealed at the end to be one giant prank.

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