"HELP... ME...!"
- Twilight's amulet absorbing magic is somewhat unsettling, what with the girls depowering and explicitly stating they feel terribly tired - to the point of collapsing on the ground.
- Worse, the part where Sunset's hands are stuck in the portal because the pendant is depowering it. Very reminiscent of the Doctor Who serial "The Stones of Blood".
- The Motocross Race. Twilight's magic amulet goes berserk, opening a bunch of portals to what's probably the Everfree Forest, because huge, carnivorous plants start coming out the various rifts in space, and it almost gets Sunset Shimmer, Indigo Zap and Sugarcoat killed. While it's generally a fairly frightening sequence, what with Sunset Shimmer failing to dodge one of the plants and getting knocked off her bike, and almost getting eaten (thank goodness Rainbow Dash was able to rescue her) and a similar fate almost befalling Indigo Zap, Sugarcoat gets the worst of it. During the race, she gets directly slammed by one of the things, which start eating her bike... with her dangling to dear life from it, at enough height that simply letting go and dropping to the ground is not possible (or at least, not without broken bones). She literally only avoids death when she loses her grip but manages (in a stroke of dumb luck and the fact this is, at the end of the day, a movie for little kids) to harmlessly bounce from the vine on the way down.
- Also, in the Principal area, Cinch watches all this havoc with a stern face, while Celestia, Luna and Cadance are all horrified. Makes sense, since seeing one's students in danger like this is one of the things a caring teacher would NEVER want to experience. And Cinch is the last person one could call "caring"... unless it's about her reputation.
- "Unleash the Magic", a creepy Villain Song for the Shadowbolts and Principal Cinch. The Principal and the Shadowbolts peer-pressure Twilight into unleashing the magic in her amulet, using her status as an outcast in the school and desire of knowledge of how this "magic" works to convince her, along with telling her that, since the Wondercolts have probably used it already, they should do so too. They also tell her that if they lose the titular games, it's all her fault. Special mention to the final moments of the song, with the overlap of Twilight falling for their words, chanting that the magic is really what she wants to see, the borderline Ominous Latin Chanting vocals from the Shadowbolts, Vice-Principal Luna and Dean Cadance announcing the final event through a speaker, and Puppy Spike yelling for Twilight to stop crescendos into a supremely suspenseful moment.
- The scariest part? Unlike the previous villains, these are normal humans who see something (or someone) they can abuse and exploit.
"If we lose then YOU'RE to blame!"
[...]
"A chance like this won't come again, you'll regret not giving in! Isn't understanding magic worth the cost?"
[...]
"We can win it, if you begin it...it's up to you to not fail this time..." - Then there's Twilight's transformation into Midnight Sparkle. When it starts, it honestly looks like she just died the most slow, painful death possible. Basically, she gets SLOWLY consumed by a giant, growing, glowing sphere of light. She's crying all the while, definitely in fear, probably also in pain.
- If you look closely, you'll see Twilight's tears evaporate from the heat when she gets fully consumed by the magic. Much like Sunset Shimmer's, remember?
- The sound it makes when she's finally sucked into the sphere. It's a slow tearing noise that makes it sound like Twilight just got vaporized or torn apart. Made worse as the last thing she does before this is desperately begging for help ("HELP...ME..!"), reaching out her hand in hopes that someone takes it (and nobody does, or is able to) before screaming in agony as the magic consumes her.
- Midnight Sparkle herself qualifies, what with the insane laughter, creepy design resembling a demonic, corvid-winged alicorn with a large twisted horn (looking like a Changeling's), and generally unsettling, erratic behavior. Then she starts, literally, blasting holes into reality. First she destroys the Wondercolt statue, then creates several other rifts ripping the dimensional barriers, and finally creates a huge rift in the ground that threatens to take the students with it. The visuals of the massive, glowing hole that slowly grows larger, the edges crumbling and falling into the void, and various students almost falling to what, at best, is a strange dangerous world, and at worst their deaths is very nightmarish. Then that fate almost befalls our heroines as they attempt to save the students in immediate danger. If it weren't for the Shadowbolts saving them, there would be... unpleasant consequences. The sheer Reality Bleed makes Midnight Sparkle the most dangerous of all the antagonists; even Discord and Tirek (despite the former being a hedonistic Reality Warper and the latter being a magic-devouring Physical God), were more or less content to remain in the Equestria dimension. Midnight Sparkle would have torn her dimension asunder to get to Equestria with zero remorse.
