Pony POV Series / Tropes A to D

Tropes for Pony POV Series
Tropes A to D | Tropes E to H | Tropes I to P | Tropes Q to Z

---

A

• Abandon Ship: The Crusaders and their allies have to abandon the Moonpearl late into the arc when it's destroyed in a confrontation with the False Princesses and Nightmare Diamond.
• Abstract Apotheosis: The Minor Arcana Alicorns are all this, being mortals who became Concepts. The Magician Alicorn (Dark World Twilight) and the Draconequus of Cruelty (Dark World Fluttercruel) did this as well.
• Abusive Parents:
  • In Reharmonization, what Discord made Derpy Hooves into.
  • And of course, there's his own Parents. Though this is ultimately subverted, as yes, they are brutal, but that's mainly due to their race embodying Good Is Not Nice and a Concept not doing their job, or worse going rogue, can be cataclysmic on a cosmic scale (such as Destruction refusing to do his causing a planet to cataclysmically stagnate and while Discord's off being Sealed Evil in a Can and an Evil Overlord, the rest of his family has to do his job to keep the universe functioning). They punish their children hard, but Havoc is shown to be loving of them and not torture them for no reason. Even Entropy is, while apathetic, not flat out cruel to her children, as she only treated Destruction as she did because it was the only way he'd do his job and she erased D___t for the justifiable reason that he intended to commit mass deicide on the entire pantheon which would've been horrific to say the least.
  • There's Derpy's biological mother, who tried to kill her when she was just a foal. Even after Applebloom's Cosmic Retcon removed that part, she still abandoned her in the woods for the same reason.
• Accidental Pun:
  • Luna's filly alternate self who plays with Pip is called Moonlight. That is, she's moonlighting as a normal filly. Word of God is that this was completely unintentional.
  • Likewise, the fact that Discord turned Blueblood into a literal Defrosting Ice Queen (well, Princess), which lead to him fulfilling the actual trope, has been said by Word of God to be accidental.
• Achilles' Heel:
  • Turns out the Eldritch Abominations imprisoned in Tartarus are vulnerable to a mixture of the blood of a member of Nature's Law and Nature's Fury due to rejecting existence. This also strips them of their immortality and lets them be destroyed, which the one Celestia and Luna fought found out too late.
  • Makarov's is that his powers weaken if he's enraged or taken off guard, as well as the fact Shining Armor is Immune to Fate.
  • Changelings have a number of these. The biggest is their armor is great against sharp weapons, but, while not shattering, is weak against blunt force. Their mind control magic can also be universally broken by a loved one showing their victim love while aware they're brainwashed. Their magic is also linked to their lifeforce, so should a Changeling run out of mana/love, they die.
  • Chrysalis herself's primary weak point is she's a love guzzler and burns through her stores rapidly, though that hasn't come into play yet.
  • Draconequi are vulnerable to anything that is created from taking something away, such as ice. Even Discord is vulnerable to it.
• Action Film, Quiet Drama Scene:
  • The incredibly action-packed Dark World, Shining Armour and Wedding arcs all have whole chapters devoted to these, giving the characters a breather between the many Wham Episodes and epic battles the arcs have and allowing for additional character development.
  • The Wedding Arc likewise has this, being mainly trying to liberate Canterlot from Chrysalis but having quiet scenes throughout.
• Action Mom:
  • Trixie's mother, Morgan, actively defends Hoofington from Princess Gaia's army. and, from what we see, is a pretty powerful Unicorn when she fights. She later actively teaches Trixie it and shows she's extremely powerful.
  • Derpy Hooves defending her daughter from Princess Gaia's forces, anyone? She's also the Doctor's companion.
  • Despite being insane, Screw Ball/Golden Tiara certainly counts. Breaking out of the heavily guarded insane asylum she's kept in is childs play for her the first time. The second time when her Mama Bear side finally kicks in? She not only kicks everypony's flanks who tries getting in her way, she kills a Cockatrice and a Timber Wolf bare hoofed!. After being rendered sane, she has lost none of her combat effectiveness and helps fight the Changelings.
  • Fauna Luster and Entropy are the mothers of their respective family's of deity, and two of the strongest beings in existence. Their one onscreen fight has been a Curbstomp Battle in their favor.
• Action Survivor:
  • Shining Armor. He might be a trained guard, but he doesn't have the magical artifacts his sister does, and yet keeps getting put in bizare and dangerous situations involving Eldritch Abominations, and still manages to survive.
  • The Cutie Mark Crusaders end up in this role during the Finale Arc, after they're left unchanged when Discord performs his endgame and warps the world into a horrific patchwork of Grimdark fanfics, and are thus the only ones that can save it. They do.
• Actually a Doombot:
  • In 15 Part 2, after getting a beatdown by a supercharged Princess Cadence, then shot in the head by Dima, it's revealed that Makarov was a robot. Justified, as it's implied it was Makarov until he was shot and he just used his powers to put a robot in his place at the last second.
  • Happens on both sides when Chrysalis and Cadence face off for the first time. Cadence was using an Avatar while Chrysalis was using one of her minions infused with her magic as a puppet body, neither of which being revealed until after the fight is over.
• Adaptational Badass:
  • Pretty much all of the battle skills shown by the cast members of G4 are all shown and amplified in full here.
  • The G1 My Little Pony 'n Friends series pony, Mimic. What is she like in this timeline? The only mortal pony to ever injure Discord and the reason he's missing that tooth by kicking him thousands of times in the face at the speed of sound! Sure, she died horrifically afterwards, but give the girl some credit!
  • G3 Pinkie Pie, Thistle Whistle, Sky Wishes, Star Catcher, Wysteria, Rarity, Spike, and Minty, though all of them had to Take a Level in Badass. Everyone but Pinkie and Minty managed to give Strife, a Physical Goddess and Reality Warper on par with Discord, a run for her money and actually scare her at one point. Pinkie and Minty beat Luna, though she was weakened at the time, she was still a powerful Physical Goddess at the time. Oh, and Star Catcher was mortal incarnation of Celestia.
  • While Canon!Cadence turned out to be pretty badass herself, this universe's version managed to fight Havoc's avatar! with an implication she actually won. It's not yet been explained how the present Cadence came to be, however.
  • The Love Cats from the IDW Comics. While in the comics they were wiped out by the Changelings, in this version they come along with Luna's guard as back up and kick flank. Pinkie Pie style. Justified in that it's explained by Pinkie (who may apparently one day become their deity) that they didn't know the Changelings were a threat in the comics while here they do.
  • Tales!Melody get's a musical variation of this. In the canon Tales, her singing ability was decent, but still developing. In this series however, she's considered such a good singer that The Dazzlings consider her to be a Worthy Opponent. Justified since her appearance in this series is set many years after the canon Tales, when Melody is well into adulthood and would naturally have had several years to perfect her craft.
• Adaptation Expansion: This done for pretty much every chracter, but especially for many of the "background" and "minor" characters as they're given a lot more to work with compared with their canonical portrayals. For example, Twinkleshine, the first background pony to speak in the show ever is re-imagined as Cadence's head of personal appearance, Octavia is given a relation to Pinkie Pie and has a special talent in rhythm, Minuette is actually The Master in pony form, and how the famous Blueblood is a Lonely Rich Kid who has a special talent in navigation and guidance.
• Advanced Ancient Humans: The 'Age of Wonders' (aka My Little Pony Tales) had managed to reach advanced levels of science and magic, but was destroyed in the disaster of the Wish Spell catastrophically failing (the equal of a magical nuclear holocaust). A Loose Canon story deals with a future where a cache of ancient Ponyland technology is uncovered, preserved in a time capsule and thus protected from the cataclysm. 160 years later, they manage to ascend to even greater heights with the uncovered technology and magic by merging the two into Magitek.
• Affably Evil: Princess Gaia is a polite, gentle, and friendly host to the Mane Cast. Of course she is still Fluttershy after all. It's noted that out of all Nightmares, she's one of the few who never killed, even accidentally.
• Affirmative-Action Legacy: A potential future showing an immortal Twilight and a new set of bearers in her predestined fight with Mortis, their group is way more species diverse than the current set up. In Dark World's Loose Canon sequel also has the new generation of Bearers be more diverse, with a Griffon, Sea Pony, and Hippogriff among their numbers.
• A Form You Are Comfortable With:
  • Havoc goes out of His way to avert this trope due to being the Anthropomorphic Personification of Fear. Rancor said He was going to use an Avatar to drop her off personally in Dark World, but couldn't decide if it was more scary due to Uncanny Valley or less scary due to being an 'outdated model'. His attempts at genuinely trying this trope work, but due to his nature normally have something unsettling about them.
  • Entropy has taken to using Maud Pie as this after she incarnated in the mortal world as her protecting the CMC from the Rumors World-Wrecking Wave.
  • Also averted with the Father of All Alicorns, who, despite His true form being somewhat confusing, never seems to hide it. This might be His presence in naturally comforting anyway.
  • Havoc, Entropy, and the Father all take disguises during Starlight's Trial, but none of Them seem to be doing it for this reason. Havoc is doing it to appeal to Starlight's pride, the Father is likely doing it out of fairness (since His true form would likely reveal He was on Starlight's side), and Entropy because...Havoc drug Her there and made Her do it.
  • All four of the Elders assume these forms during the Rumors, since they're helping the CMC out.
  • According to Word of God, the courtroom from Starlight's trial (actually the realm of Judicium, the Alicorn of Judgment) was an example of this trope.
  • The Concepts as a whole seem to do this when they appear to mortals. Even if they appear in their true cosmic forms, mortals see them in a form resembling a member of their race embodying their concepts. This means that Celestia and Luna are effectively doing this all the time. The only mortals who can see the true form of a Concept and understand it seems to be mortals who truly and genuinely comprehend their Concept perfectly, including Venus's mortal lover and the Tales Era Sparkle Pony Napper (who saw Luna's).
• Afraid of Needles: Twinkle Shine is apparently terrified of needles, when the Shining's group needs to get vaccinations before arriving in Zebrafrica she is clearly hesitant to get hers, and apparently ran away at some point during it. Shining himself also seems to have this fear as well, though he at least has good reasons why. According to Godzillawolf, the beta reader who suggested the joke, he did it as a Take That Me to himself, as he's this trope in real life.
• Afterlife Welcome: Many characters who die are met in the afterlife by loved ones. Most notably is the Tales cast, who all get such a welcome.
• After the End:
  • Turns out the present world is the result of a Class 2 Apocalypse of the G1/Tales world. Pony POV Series Gaiden: Seven Dreams/Nightmares takes place in this world.
  • The Dark World Arc probably counts as well, seeing as Discord's ruled the world for a thousand years.
  • The Rumors Arc technically takes place in one of these situations, however the CMC's goal seems to be to revert the end of the world back to normal.
• The Ageless: Celestia and Luna, though they actually have Nigh-Invulnerable immortality. Everypony in the G3 world had this, however, thanks to an ancient spell. Unfortunately, giving birth to Star Catcher broke the spell on her mother, Star Maker, and resulted in her aging and dying while all around her remained the same. Pinkie was included in this, but its safe to assume she's lost it.
• Alas, Poor Villain:
  • Destruction, for a given definition of 'villlain'. Despite being literally addicted to destruction, he was also the most sympathetic of them, as he hated his addiction and wished he didn't have it at all. His desire in the war was to cause so much destruction he'd finally be rid of it once and for all. Him being killed and eaten by his own brother is extremely tragic.
  • Kind of hard not to feel sorry for the Master in the Dark World, who the Valeyard subjected to the same thing Discord did. What's worse, according to Word of God, the Valeyard's claim to keep killing him until he gets a good personality was just an excuse to kill him over and over again.
  • Despite spending a thousand years massacring entire families with no remorse, following Discord's orders without protest, and generally being the biggest Jerkass in the Dark World, It's pretty hard not to pity Angry Pie when Twilight gives her a HUGE No-Holds-Barred Beatdown in "Cold Hoof Blues". By the end of the chapter, Angry Pie is crying and begging her foals to forgive her for failing to succeed in her task to bring them back to life. Even the other heroes (whom Angry Pie just tried to kill) are shocked and horrified by Twilight's actions. Thankfully, they manage to talk Twilight down and she ultimately redeems Angry Pie with a reverse Memory Spell (showing her Twilight's memories instead of her own).
  • Similarly, it's hard not to feel bad for Dark World Fluttercruel, even after all she's done, when she watches Discord get literally stabbed in the back by Rancor, which she simply cannot comprehend. She ends up crying and pleading with Discord to absorb her to heal himself. It shows that despite all else, she's still a foal who deeply loves her father and doesn't want him to die. What's she like by the end of the final fight with her? A broken little child who by that point knows her actions were wrong but is too driven by her Undying Loyalty to her father to make a Heel–Face Turn.
  • Dark World!Discord as well, who wanted nothing more than to save Fluttercruel, but Paradox won't let him, ever. While at the beginning of the "Groundhog Day" Loop he was an unrepentant monster, by the time we've seen him, he's been trapped for several hundred million years in his own Ironic Hell and wants to pull a Heel–Face Turn, but Paradox is forcing him to remain an Evil Overlord. Seeing him actually tell Twilight not to stop the No-Holds-Barred Beatdown the rest of the mane cast are giving him because he deserves it and making them promise not to do the same to Mad Tiara and Screwball (his own family he has left) makes him rather sympathetic.
  • "Nightmare World: Broken Mirror" does this with Nightmare Mirror in an Alternate Universe were she won. After a thousand years ending with her having managed to remove the concept of deceit from the world...she shuts down her defenses and lets the Princesses capture her without a fight because she won't lie, because she's the 'Cruelest of Truths', she can't hide from the fact she's a criminal who did horrible things to make her dream world a reality. Despite succeeding, her methods of obtaining it mean even she can't deny the evil she's done.
  • Chrysalis's death gets some of this, as while unrepentant to the end, she still cared for Sweetie Belle and her being there manages to be a tragic spin on things. If anything, it's tragic because as much as Sweetie Belle wants Chrysalis to be saved, Chrysalis can only be redeemed by her evil persona dying Deader than Dead and reincarnating into an innocent filly.
• The Alcatraz:
  • It's revealed Celestia more or less uses the sun as this. Prisoners are immortal while there, completely aware, and can feel everything, and naturally being it's the sun there's no easy escape until their sentence is through. However, Celestia's words imply this is reserved for murderers and the only known inmate is Professor Kabuto, a mass murdering Sociopath who enjoyed performing horrific experiments on innocent ponies, including his own kind, so the horrific nature is not without good reason. Fluttershy might have been sent here had her actions as Princess Gaia resulted in the deaths of all of Equestria's foals. Humorously, Celestia also apparently puts inmates to work tending to the native flora and fauna (yes, the sun has flora and fauna in this universe) in hopes of reforming them.
  • Tartarus is depicted as a prison for wicked souls with Havoc as both the prison and the Warden. Tirek is the only know person to ever escape.
• Alien Geometries:
  • Discord's castle in the Dark World. It constantly shifts both exterior and interior, seemingly as much of its own will as of Discord's, and many of its rooms seem dedicated to psychologically breaking ponies for Discord's amusement. Oh, and for bonus points, one room is a void that leads to Ponythulu's domain.
  • Pandora's Realm also has them, being a giant nonsensical labyrinth.
  • It's safe to say every place in the spirit world is this, given they're not confined by the limitations of the physical one. Things there are typically described as being multiple things at once.
  • The Elders' true forms are this, as attempting to follow one part of them to another results in them suddenly stretching towards infinity.
• Alien Kudzu: It turns out the G1 Flories were this. They're alien plants that Discord transplanted to Ponyland, and outside their native habitat they cause the Walking Wasteland effect they had. The Crab Nasties are their natural predators transplanted to counter balance them.
• Alliance of Alternates: Applejack teams up with five other versions of herself from across the multiverse to defeat Nightmare Mirror.
• All Just a Dream:
  • Luna wakes up, gets told by Celestia her night out with Pip has gotten her painted as a molester by the tabloids, has an arguement with Celestia at a guardian party, kills and revives Pip as an immortal zombie, turns evil again, tries to murder her sister, only for Celestia to break out her ultimate weapon and fight back. Luna gets bisected by a spear and... wakes up in her chariot next to Pip. It's left unrevealed as to rather or not this was a vision of a possible future or simply a nightmare, either way, it teaches her a lesson she really needed to learn.
  • "Character Rerailment/There Are No Bad Seeds" is a subversion. Silver Spoon ends up having a nightmare where she experiences the events of "One Bad Apple" trapped in her own body as it acts out her actions in the episode. The subversion comes from the fact it's actually her being Mind Raped by the now Nightmare Diamond Tiara trying to convince her her only role in the world is to be her minion. Silver breaks the nightmare and drives Diamond off by showing her resolve to save her.
  • Played With. Luna used her full divine might to force the Rumors reality into the Dream World instead of Oblivion, so as to prevent the universe from having to deal with the Shadows of Existence of the corrupted version of the world. As a result, to everypony without a Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory, the events of the Rumors were nothing but a nightmare. This has an added benefit of permitting some Character Development to stick. This was only possible because reality was extremely fluxible at the time.
• All of Them: Shining threatens to throw the book at Thunderchild and clarifies he means this. Given they're in a library at the time, it would rather sting...
  Thunderchild: "Even the Roedinian literature? There are some big books there..."
• All There in the Manual: A good portion of the background information usually in regards to Worldbuilding is written in alexwarlorn's Deviantart journals. They can be found here. However, he would try to get the more plot-relevant information written in the chapters themselves.
• All There in the Script: The audio adaptation refers to The Voice in the Dark World chapters as "the Nameless Passenger" for the sake of having something to refer to it as in the credits. Likewise, its Good Counterpart is referred to as "the Benevolent Interloper".
• All Your Base Are Belong to Us:
  • Due to being much better prepared than in canon, the Wedding Arc sees Chrysalis successfully and covertly take over Canterlot and the heroes have to spend the entire arc retaking it.
  • Discord and his group one up Chrysalis by a big margin by corrupting Canterlot, Cloudsdale, Ponyville and nearly everywhere else in one foul swoop at the beginning of the Rumors Arc.
• Already Done for You:
  • The Nightmare forces in the Finale are taken care of thanks to Luna and her rescuers.
  • When heading to the next bubble Fluttershy's, in the Finale arc, the CMC and Button Mash figured they had to use Angel to save Fluttershy. Turns out Fluttercruel and Dark World!Nightmare Whisper already took care of it by having Cruel' eat the rumors. Ironically, it was Angel who was corrupted and needed Fluttershy, especially since he also was holding the Our Butterfly hostage.
    • The only draw back to this was that they had to face Tootsie and Truffle before moving on.
• Alternate Timeline: Several have been revealed. It's also revealed that the Pony POV universe is an Alternate Timeline to the main series. Dark World is set in another such timeline with Shining Armor being for-want-of-a-nail.
• Alternate Universe: Is established as one from the actual series, referred to as the 'heart world'. Dark World is another alternate universe and an entire multiverse is shown to exist.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Parodied In-Universe with Luna and Celestia, the tabloids do this all the time. Celestia, being who she is, has fooled around with them a good bit with this under an assumed name for various reasons. Including taking the uptight nobles down a few pegs.
• Alternative-Self Name-Change: Happens somewhat often when alternate timelines are seen. The most notable is Orangejack, Applejack's Alternate Self from a timeline where she never left Manehatten.
• Always Chaotic Evil:
  • Subverted. Despite Discord being purely evil, being born of Disharmony does not automatically make one evil. This is a major plot point in Fluttercruel's story arc. It's also revealed that Discord was simply one of a group of Draconequi, but seems to be the only truly evil one of the bunch. We see some of the others in "Generational Transitions" and some of them are downright nice. Even Destruction, a Mad Bomber who loves blowing things up, has some degree of empathy for the ponies. Discord was having the time of his life doing whatever he pleased in a universe that was going to be destroyed anyway. They'd simply Good Is Not Soft about their duties.
  • Not to mention that in "AJ's Dream," Liarjack (or one version of her) was shown to wield the Element of Kindness.
  • Also subverted with Diamond Dogs. The original trio actually end up entering a business venture with Rarity and Shining Armor reveals there are even some very loyal ones in the Guard. Completely subverted in Dark World were they were hyper evolved by contact with the Heart of Ponyland and became monks.
  • Also subverted with the Changelings, as some, such as Moth realized what they were doing was wrong. The two Changeling brothers who were sent to kill Trixie also had a Heel Realization and faked Trixie's death when she didn't show, then proceeded to smuggle some innocent ponies out of the castle in the chaos. It's later revealed that Weaver, Diver, and Bombardier are also heroic Changelings. The Changeling Race also pulls a Heel–Race Turn in the end with some exceptions who went with Chrysalis's heir Pitcher Plant. Chrysalis and Kabuto are the only two genuinely evil of the bunch we see.
  • Subverted with the Outer Concepts aren't really morally good or evil being closer to forces of nature. Nythy and Abandon are the only two who can really be called evil of the lot.
• Amazingly Embarrassing Parents: Twilight and Shining Armor's, at least their mother. For one thing, she published a book...about a Harem Comedy In Space. While Cadence and her hoofmaidens apparently enjoyed it enough that they all read it, Shining and Twilight are both humiliated by its mention (Shining more so for accidentally giving her the idea to put it in space).
• Amazonian Beauty:
  • Dark World!Rarity is described as this after her Heel–Face Turn and getting a bath, due to hauling around Tom and tons of other rocks around for centuries in addition to being one of Discord's Co-Dragons making her physically powerful. While Spike doesn't care about her appearance, it's definitely a plus.
  • Apparently, Discord created an island of Amazonian mares...who all look like Shady.
  • Patch in the 7 Dreams/Nightmares story becomes this due to becoming competent and regularly overthrowing Evil Overlords.
• And I Must Scream:
  • Discord shares the same fate as his canon self. Ironically, being Taken for Granite is normally a subversion in this universe. It is actually surprisingly pleasant for the average person, you just peacefully contemplate your place in the universe, mentally compose poetry, and generally remain in a peaceful, zen-like state and aren't even traumatized when you're freed. It's only this for Discord because he can't stand being sane and peaceful, so it's torture for him.
  • A voluntary case in Nightmare Whisper, who reveals that the pain and suffering that she bears has already killed her twice, but she keeps using her power to bring herself back to life so she may continue to bear it.
    • Celestia's description of what she would have done to Fluttershy if she had inadvertently killed all of the unborn foals of Equestria. "I would have torn out your soul... and sealed you away for a lifetime per every life you had ended. In the sun, your soul five thousand miles below the surface. Able to feel everything." Celestia may be nice and merciful, but mass child murder would've crossed the line.
    • This one ultimately happened to Professor Kabuto as punishment for his long list of atrocities.
  • You know how Dinky was turned into a muffin in Epilogue? Dark World 14 reveals that she was conscious the entire thousand years!
  • Dark World!Discord was on the receiving end of one by Nightmare Paradox. Spent what amounts to several hundred million years trapped in a "Groundhog Day" Loop that always ends with his and Fluttercruel's deaths. He considers being Dragged Off to Hell and killed several billion times by his family as punishment for his crimes relaxing compared to it.
    • To put this in perspective, according to a Loose Canon Recursive Fanfiction, the Valeyard considers his fate less horrific than what Paradox did to Discord. The Valeyard is saying this while in Hell.
  • Sweetheart's little sister Cream ended up suffering this in Sweetheart's Gaiden story. The explosion ended up 'locking her in', meaning her body was paralyzed to the point she couldn't even speak, but she was completely aware and conscious of everything. Including being dragged off and torn apart by mutants created by the explosion, taking this trope literally in that she literally couldn't scream. Worse in that because of her condition, they may simply went straight to eating her alive. Thankfully, Apple Bloom's Cosmic Retcon saves her from this fate via Sweetheart's Healing Hands.
  • Another potential candidate for this trope is Nightmare Mirror in the Dark World. Her very status as the Cruelest of Truths means that she is fully aware of all of the flaws in the Dark World, and unlike the other Nightmares, she knows that the ponies are all living beings, no matter how much Nightmare Paradox insists that they're all just unimportant NPCs who aren't even real. This means that assuming she gets purified by the Elements of Harmony, she is going to be hit extra hard by Heroic BSoD combined with My God, What Have I Done?, and will probably become The Atoner even more then the other Nightmares. It's eventually revealed that Mirror is completely aware of just how horrific the Nightmares' actions are and they're earning an eternity in Hell for it, and even the thought that the end result will prove The Extremist Was Right isn't enough to make her stop hating herself for it.
  • Stitches, one of Dark World!Fluttercruel's numerous victims, was subjected to this. Fluttercruel cut her tendons to keep her from escaping and slowly tortured her to death, keeping her alive solely to draw it out as long as she possibly could. She was even denied escaping into insanity by being forced to hold her mind together so the Serial Killer would focus on her instead of her younger siblings. It turns out, Stitches was actually Fluttercruel inserted into the past after her Draconequusification as punishment for the crimes she committed. The experience actually completes her Heel Realization.
  • Makarov's 'Alicorn' Cyborgs. The moment that Shining frees the first one, Yablokovodka, she breaks down sobbing and Mother Deer implies she was completely aware the entire time and Shining killing her had been a Mercy Kill.
  • When Makarov Ret Gones the Changelings with his Reality Warper powers, the story cuts to Ponyville where Moth, a benign Changeling living with Lyra and Bon Bon, is left invisible and incapable of interacting with them, but capable of hearing them talk about her 'death' while she's helpless to do anything about it. The scary part is Makarov does this casually. This actually ends up making the Changelings more dangerous as it allowed Chrysalis to see her actions in the Heart World ahead of time and change her plans.
  • When Shining breaks Makarov's antler off and later when the Lights begin leaking out, he starts hearing the voices of Makarov's victims begging him to kill Makarov. The implication is everyone that Makarov has consumed is suffering one of these!
  • Silver Spoon during "Character Rerailment". Nightmare Diamond traps her in a nightmare where she must watch her body act out the events of "One Bad Apple", only able to act when she wants to do or say something the canon Silver did. She spends most of it watching her body laugh as the Crusaders are tormented by Babs Seed. Thankfully, she finally escapes in the end.
  • Chrysalis mind control seems to be this for certain ponies. Twilight and Applejack both show signs of being aware of what she's forcing them to do while Moon Dancer's mind control broke down and almost destroyed her mind while she tried to help stop herself from helping her to no avail. Applejack's response to being asked what being brainwashed was like was to refuse to talk about it due to how horrible it was. However, Sweetie Belle and Spike haven't shown signs of this, with Sweetie almost seeming happy to do Chrysalis' bidding. It's hard to say which is worse. This is worse for Applejack because Chrysalis spent three days actively torturing her before she was freed. It's noted Applejack had insane Heroic Willpower to stay sane.
  • Applejack ends up being subjected to this again during Rumors, where she's still sane despite being subjected to the Rumor's curse and aware of what's happening, but unable to do anything about it. Part of this was due to Umbra Breeze loathing her for her past incarnation Sweetheart wiping out his Whispering Plague form. Again, Applejack's Heroic Willpower pulls through, but it's little wonder the first thing she does once freed is kicking Nythy's butt.
• And There Was Much Rejoicing: Discord's defeat in "Origins" sparks this, obviously.
• Animesque: The audio-adaptations have recently been taking a step in this direction, complete with an official opening theme that's actually shortened for each installment and title cards!
• Anthropomorphic Personification:
  • The Pantheons are this. There are at least twenty Alicorns, 5 Draconequi, and four Elders. There used to be six Draconequi, but their mother Entropy, the personification of Heat Death, Nothingness, and the End of the Universe, erased _______ from existence and Destruction, the personification of Mass Destruction was killed when Discord ate him. Eventually their parents gave birth to Rancor, the personification of Violence, Passions, and Anger (she eventually also takes Destruction's place as the personification of Destruction). The others are Strife, the personification of Conflict, Natural Selection, and Competition, Pandora, personification of Imagination, Creativity, and Hallucinations, Anarchy, the personification of Revolution and Freedom, and of course Discord himself. The Alicorns all represent Concepts as well, but the only ones that have gotten much focus are Celestia, personification of the Sun and the Day, Luna, personification of the Moon and the Night, Cadence, personification of Harmony and Music, Galaxia, personification of Stars, Healing, and Renewal, Venus, the personification of Love, Mortis, personification of Death, Rebirth, and Change and Rota Fortuna, personification of Fate, Cause and Effect, and Free Will. The rest of been revealed by Word of God. The Elders of the Draconequi are the aforementioned Entropy and her husband Havoc, personification of Mass Hysteria, Fears, and Survival Instinct while the Alicorn Elders are the Father of All Alicorns, the personification of Wisdom, Sanity, and Existence, and his wife Fauna Luster, the personification of Existence and Empathy. The Elders are also the personification of their own dimension, Havoc being Hell, the Father Heaven, Entropy Oblivion, and Fauna Luster the Alicorn's domain.
  • We eventually see that mortals can become Concepts as well, though it is far from easy and it is supposedly completely impossible to become a Draconequi (possibly because Entropy is the antithesis of life). All members of the Alicorn's Minor Arcana have thus far been created this way. These include Princess Gaia, the personification of Organic Life and Mercy who was Fluttershy, Princess Veritas, the personification of Truth and Honesty who was the alternate Applejack who turned into Nightmare Mirror, Princess Thalia, the personification of Joy and Nostalgia who was an alternate Pinkie Pie, Princess Fidelitas, the personification of Loyalty and Breaking Cycles who was the alternate Rainbow Dash who turned into Nightmare Manacle, and Princess Jiniri, the personification of Wishes and Miracles who was an alternate Razzaroo. Dark World!Fluttercruel ended up becoming a Draconequus named Odyne, in part due to being a demigod and Discord's daughter as opposed to a straight mortal, becoming the Concept of Cruelty, though possibly also Nepotism.
  • At the tail end of Dark World, Dark World!Twilight fuses with her potential Nightmare self, Nightmare Paradox, becoming the only member of the Major Arcana to be born a mortal (as opposed to the Minor Arcana, who are all ascended mortals) — Amicitia, personification of Magic, Friendship and Happy Endings. During the ascension process, she meets a previous iteration of Dark World!Trixie, who became Anasi, personification of Drama, Storytelling, and Trickery. And then when Twilight/Amicitia returns to the mortal plane, she helps Dark World!Rarity ascend and become Liberalis, the personification of the Mortal World.
  • King Sombra's Origins Episode depicts him as the living embodiment of the crystal ponies' collective fears, brought into existence by one of Discord's cousins as a favor for Discord.
  • The Draconequi's cousins, the Outer Gods, mostly seem to embody negative traits. Abandon is the personification of Sadomasochism. Nyarlathotrot is best described as the personification of Horror, Tragedy, and the negative side of the Shadows Who Make (the authors) who like writing Dark Fics. In contrast Fillimon is the personification of the positive side of the Shadows Who Make.
• Anti-Hero:
  • Trixie after her Heel–Face Turn. She's undoubtedly on the good side, but she's still got a lot of issues to work around and is willing to use methods that aren't exactly heroic to get the job done.
  • Fluttercruel is this, being much more pragmatic and viscous than her mother, but generally heroic...in the prime universe anyway.
  • Queen Majesty is this. While she is ruthless when it comes to dealing with the genuinely evil, she's otherwise upright and moral. She's very capable of mercy as well, and The High Queen to her subjects. It's just trying to harm said subjects is most liking going to earn you her swift wrath.
• Anti-Mutiny: A variant happens during the Wedding: while the official orders are to capture the 'fake' Princess Cadence and her group, several ponies and guards know the ones giving the command are the Changelings and thus work to undermine that directive and their goals to preserve Equestria.
• Anti-Villain:
  • Princess Gaia is a Type III, as she genuinely believed she was doing the right thing and never killed anypony, but was also insane and tried to force her vision of the world on the world.
  • The Chaos Six in Dark World are a Type II, with the exception of Fluttercruel or so it seems. They've been emotionally broken and brainwashed by Discord, and don't want to be evil. The moment they're able to break free, they do.
  • Nightmare could technically be a Type II with aspects of Type III. By nature, Nightmares are insane and generally Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds with good intentions.
  • General Hercules Beetle is a Type IV. He lacks the Changelings' Fantastic Racism and actually respects the ponies. He sees them as entirely in the right to fight back against the Changelings and generally seems like a good person. However, he took oaths to both Cocoon and Chrysalis and refuses to break it. So his being a villain seems to more be due to Undying Loyalty than genuinely being evil.
  • Tootsie and Alula in the Rumor's Arc are this, as they genuinely have no idea they're working for the bad guys at all.
  • Thunderstorm from Majesty's arc is this. While he's a mass murderer harboring deep Fantastic Racism against humans, he has a very good reason to believe Humans Are Bastards, even if not all humans are.
• Anyone Can Die: Zigzagged in the Shining Armor Arc. Once the final battle Makarov begins, characters both major and minor start dropping like flies. However, due to the nature of Makarov's defeat, they're all resurrected once he's dead.
• Apocalypse Anarchy: The end of the Age of Wonders became this, as self styled dictators whose 'authority' doesn't extend beyond the range of their toys pop up, newly sapient animals as revolutionaries without a goal or cause, and all the stuff that happens when society suffers a terminal blow.
• Apocalyptic Log:
  • Razzaroo from the G3 universe wrote one as her final act, being allowed to finish by Pandemonium due to it being her final work. In The Stinger, Twilight gets her hooves on it thanks to the Interviewer.
  • Bon Bon the First's diary, which details the aftermath of the destruction of civilization Destruction triggered to prevent the G3 universe from being created.
• Apologetic Attacker:
  • We don't see it, since it's happening in Trixie's head, but Princess Starflower apologizes before smacking Trixie on the head with a mallet to snap her out of Princess Gaia's Lotus-Eater Machine.
  • Princess Gaia/Nightmare Whisper herself is also one. She is Fluttershy, so this is to be expected.
• Appease the Volcano God: Mentioned in Bright Eyes' chapter in a Call-Back to My Little Pony Tales. Back in the present, Twilight and Pinkie ask Luna if there actually are volcano gods. She replies that while there are deities who qualify (some of which she's related to), none of them require pony sacrifices, that was a Lava Demon thing.
• Arbitrary Skepticism:
  • Some Jerkass asylum orderlies refuse to believe Fluttershy can really talk to animals and think she's just making up what the animals are saying. This is in spite of the fact they believe in the powers she wielded as Princess Gaia/Nightmare Whisper.
  • Flutternice refuses to believe that a Reaper's weapon is sentient and communicates with its wielder, in spite of everything else she has experienced.
  • Some of the characters find the stories of Megan Williams and her friends hard to believe.
• Arch-Enemy:
  • Discord to the Princesses and the Mane Cast.
  • Makarov to Shining Armor. Invoked on Makarov's part.
  • Diamond Tiara wants to be this as a Nightmare, though in part because she wants to commit Suicide by Cop.
• The Archmage:
  • Starswirl the Bearded and Mimic seem to be identified as this by ponykind, with Mimic's power being enough to fight Discord and actually hurt him, though not beat him. It's implied the Element of Magic provides its bearer the POTENTIAL to become this if they can manage to reach it.
  • Hydia and the Moochick, for black magic and white magic respectively. Both were incredibly powerful, and the Moochick was shown to be able to mop the floor with any witch that wasn't Hydia. Lilith is a straighter example, having become such a powerful witch that she is more or less an Eldritch Abomination.
• Artifact Domination: The Alicorn Amulet, as in canon. Here it turns out the reason it works like this is it has a portion of the Made of Evil First Witch Lilith sealed inside it.
• Artificial Afterlife: In the very far future of Pony POV Series, the Earthbound Kings are each experiencing this, living in a planet sized super computer with their brain at the center... as the planet sized machines constantly seek more raw material to devour to keep expanding their personal VR paradise.
• Arc Words:
  • Almost all the stories end with the pony in question accepting her new position, declaring "I'm free." In the Discorded Series, this is normally a bad thing, but in the Reharmonized Series, it's a good one.
    • [[spoiler:After her Heel–Face Turn in the Dark World, Twilight includes it in her speech.
  • Pearls for Fluttershy and Fluttercruel's arc.
  • There's an arc SONG in the form of the three "So Many Wonders" reprises. The first is about Fluttercruel's happiness over being free from Fluttershy and able to see the world, second is a Villain Song by Princess Gaia used to hypnotise ponies into her vision of the world, and the final is a Triumphant Reprise at the finale of the arc, Fluttershy and Fluttercruel singing together about how their worldview has changed for the better.
  • "Dying is easy, living is hard" for the entire series, but especially the Dark World. While in the main series it deals with overcoming what Discord did to them, in the Dark eWorld it's about living with what you've done and the world you live in.
  • "Forgiveness is not earned, it's given" for the Dark World. In addition to the above theme, Forgiveness is an overarching theme, both being able to give it and being able to accept it.
  • "Sweet Music" for Melody's 7 Dreams/Nightmares Gaiden story, both the song and the words. First it's part of Melody's fame, then it is the name of her daughter but the song itself is something that must be kept quiet or it'll get the family killed (Melody was made The Scapegoat for the disaster). In the end the song and the words come to represent Melody's legacy, which lives on her in descendants Rarity and Sweetie Belle.
  • "You've got a lot to learn about ponies" has cropped up in the Wedding Arc, usually when one of the heroes is talking to a Changeling.
• Armor Is Useless:
  • Subverted. The Shining Armor Arc has armor which, while not COMPLETELY invulnerable, has protected its wearer from more serious injury. It's just Shining Armor's shield spells are more effective so they're more frequently used.
  • Subverted even more so later on when the special armor he obtains as a gift from Pandora saves him from a sniper round to the chest and later stops Gilda from being killed instantly by Makarov, allowing her to perform a Last Breath Bullet that destroys the Iron Curtain.
  • The Changeling's natural armor is also a subversion. It protects them from bladed weapons, though blunt weapons do hurt them more successfully.
  • The Mane Six get magic armor when Mother Deer/The Tree of Harmony unlocks the Elements full potential, and it also subverts this trope. It's very handy and offers them much needed protection in the Final Battle, and even has some mental protections as well.
• Armor-Piercing Question:
  • A large part of the Father of All Alicorns' dialog to Liarjack consists of these. Justified, as Applebloom got his help in the first place to break Discord's control on Liarjack and reform her.
  • Dark World!Rarity gives one to Rainbow Dash to snap her out of her Heel–Face Turn induced Heroic BSoD, asking her the one question Discord hasn't let her ask herself for a thousand years.
    Rarity: Dash…we all have a choice…Ours is to save the world…I've chosen to want you back as my friend…But what do YOU want to do?
  • Dark World!Rainbow Dash later returns the favor after ripping out her own Element to snap Rarity out of her own self-delusion. Also a Call-Back to Rarity trying to forcibly take it when Rainbow was suicidal.
    Rainbow Dash: Not so hot when you have to do it the dirty and ugly way is it?
  • Dark World!Twilight delivers one to the rest of the Dark World!Mane Cast to make them realize them attacking a defenseless, mortally wounded Discord was wrong.
    Twilight: What does hurting a monster who's already dying and no longer a threat to anything DO? Payback? Retribution?
  • Dark World!Discord manages to do this to himself by proxy of asking the question to Twilight and hearing her answer, making him realize there's one choice he can make to stop Paradox's "Groundhog Day" Loop plan.
    Discord: ...Twilight...what would you say if I said I never had a choice?
    Twilight: ...I'd say you were wrong. You always have a choice.
  • In a literal example, Twilight asks the unaskable question that triggers the the Nameless Passenger's Glamour Failure and forces it to reveal itself.
    Twilight: What are you?
  • The Interviewer's get one on General Hercules when he's describing his desire that Chrysalis had taken Sweetie Belle's Last-Second Chance. It doesn't cause him to have a Heel–Face Turn, but it seems to shake him up a bit:
    Pegasus: Did you say anything?
  • Applejack gets a big one on Queen Cadenza (Alicorn!Chrysalis), making her realize the Elements of Harmony gave her a heart and beginning her final Villainous Breakdown.
    Applejack: Ya say the Elements fixed ya so ya weren't half-baked? Tell me darlin', what so harmonious about a Alicorn who can't feel a thing for the ponies who love'er more than they love breathin'?!
  • Applejack gets another one to Dark World!Nightmare Manacle while trying to stop her from finishing her ritual to recreate Amicitia.
    Applejack: Ah just want to know: is it worth it?
  • Celestia manages to deliver a series of these that leaves Discord speechless after the Crusaders manage to erase Goatcord and by extension his insanity, given his stated motivation was having a big finale.
    Celestia: Well, Discord? Are you satisfied?...I ask again, Discord. Was this to your satisfaction? These brave foals have struck you a terrible blow indeed. Now that you can see it all clearly, was this a satisfying grand performance for you? Are you ready to finally move on from this miserable nonsense? Tell me, Dissy, how does it feel to be able to [[spoiler:remember our good times without the taint of your madness?
• Armor-Piercing Response:
  • Luna manages this to a question not directed to her, but still. She helps Celestia break through to Discord by responding to Celestia's Armor-Piercing Question with a detailed praise of the battle Discord had presented to make it clear he did indeed get the final battle he desired and without his insanity can no longer justify what he's doing.
  Luna: So Discord, we shall say as both a fellow artist and a patron of the arts, we give thy stage performance our royal approval. Certainly one worthy of the history books.
  • One happens during the 'Duel of Tears' in Dark World, causing Rainbow/Traitor Dash to snap:
  Rainbow/Traitor Dash: Arguing with you is like asking Fluttercruel to not maul kittens! I hate you more than I hate her! And do you know what?! After I kill you today, I won't even go back to the castle right away! Oh no! Before I return to Discord and make him reset the timeline, as promised, I'm going to delay a week, just sitting in a tree, watching the clouds roll by! That should be enough time for your ghost to explain to your mother, your father, and every other unicorn and pegasus in the afterlife, why they don't deserve a second shot at life, because of a bunch of suffering ponies alive now!
  Twilight: And when we're all in Limbo, you can explain to everypony YOU sent there why you chose to make them Deader than Dead to resurrect ponies gone for a thousand years who you yanked out of Pony Heaven.
• Artistic License – Biology: Throughout the story, there are examples of stallion leaders with a harem of mares, be it happening or implied as a result of societal or mental regression. This is a misconception. While real life wild herds do generally have a stallion for breeding (which might be where the authors got the idea from), the stallion himself isn't the leader. Justified that when the ponies were taught societal norms from humans and other patriarchal societies rather than growing up naturally when they achieved sapience in the beginning of the Age of Myths (G1). It is noted that even back then, the leaders are still mares, implying that even stallions with harems still at the whims his leader.
• Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence:
  • Every sentient cow in the Dark World somehow did this a few years after Discord's reign started. We never get an explanation as to how this happened, but being Dark World, it doesn't warrant as much confusion as it would otherwise.
  • The Breezies were taken directly to Heaven by Abbatissa, the Alicorn of Prayer, as opposed to being remade or erased, with the exception of Daisyslow and Zipzee, who stayed with Rainbow Dash, becoming Derpy and Fluttershy respectfully. It seems be partly because of their selfless personalities and partly because Zipzee managed to perform a miracle to break Discord's spell on the Breezies. They also got to take Breezie Blossom with them due to Divine Intervention literally answering Zipzee and Daisyslow's prayers, though Abbatissa makes it clear it's only because of very unique circumstances that that was possible.
• As Herself: In-Universe, Princess Luna plays herself in a play where she makes a Deal with the Devil with three Earth Ponies. She also wrote it 1000 years ago.
• Asian Fox Spirit: Shining Armor's group ends up having one staying with them in Neighpon, constantly pranking them. However, because it's a white Kitsune, which are considered sacred and lucky, they just have to put up with it. Turns out it's the Empress of Neighpon's pet and was acting as their guardian on her behalf, catching some robbers that tried to break in.
• Assimilation Plot:
  • The Princess Gaia arc, where Fluttershy plans to assimilate all of Equestria's suffering into herself.
  • This is also the plan of the extradimensional invaders imprisoned in Tartarus, with the added horror of turning the universe into a horrific world where the torment never ends.
• The Atoner:
  • Fluttercruel fights her way back from the Void to confront Nightmare Whisper after being doomed to non-sentience, because she truly cares for Fluttershy as a parent and a friend and doesn't want her last thought to be that she led Fluttershy to evil.
  • Fluttershy still holds a lot of guilt over what she did, even if good DID come of it in the end. She decides it's best if she lets everypony decide rather they want to love her for the good she did or hate her for the bad, but admits she'll regret some of her misdeeds the rest of her life.
  • Trixie to some degree, as all the things she'd not felt guilty about now cause her a great deal of it.
  • Dark World!Applejack after her Heel–Face Turn. While Twilight has this too, Applejack's is more pronounced as she wants to earn her place in Pony Heaven next to her sister.
    • ALL of the Dark World Mane Six count after each has had their respective Heel–Face Turn really.
  • Dark World!Discord, due to having long since had a Heel Realization during the "Groundhog Day" Loop and only being evil because Nightmare Paradox is forcing him to. When Rancor throws a wrench in her works, Discord Out Gambit her and gets Twilight to see his memories to give them a chance to stop her. When we next see him in the afterlife, Discord has already sent apology letters to Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy and is willingly allowing his family to punish him.
• Audio Adaptation: A very large fanproject presently in the works is making one of these. Yes, the entire fanfic from start to finish... already available in two languages ^note English and German, nontheless.
• Author Appeal: Kendell 2, the co-author of the Shining Armor arc, is a huge fan of Super Sentai and Kamen Rider. Once he became the co-author of said arc, numerous references to the two series started cropping up in the arc.
• Answers to the Name of God: Happens a few times with Celestia, Luna, and other deities, who are literal cosmic embodiments of concepts.
• Awful Truth:
  • Applejack willingly steps up to see this by looking into the Truth in order to fully understand the thing that Discord used to break her. She learns a lot of harsh truths, but ultimately uses them to help everypony. It also causes her to become a Living Lie Detector as a result.
  • Discord drives Diamond insane and triggers her transformation into a Nightmare by revealing the truth of how her mother went insane and the memories she repressed.
• Ax-Crazy:
  • Discord, natch.
  • The Corrupted Six in the Dark World timeline are this to varying degrees. While Angry Pie and Fluttercruel are your typical "bloodthirsty psycopaths who get off on murder and torture" insane, the others have more subdued forms on insanity. Twilight Tragedy is chronically depressed and down, physically incapable of seeing joy or hope in anything until her meeting with Apple Pie, Liarjack is physically incapable of telling any truth at all until her reunion with Applebloom, and Greedity is a deranged Attention Whore who literally lusts over a pile of rocks. The only one who isn't insane in some way is Traitor Dash, but that doesn't stop Discord from tormenting her and forcing her to be his lapdog. They get better.
  • In Reharmonization, Discord made Archer arrow-crazy and both Silver Spoon's father and Golden Harvest literally Ax-Crazy.
  • General Admiral Makarov, the Big Bad of Shining Armor's Arc. 'Send a small army to try and kill them' is his default reaction to you not knowing his name.
  • Queen Chrysalis, but in a more subdued way than the others. She's a mass murdering sociopath with a sadistic streak a mile long, but for the most part her psychotic nature is kept subtext rather than in the forefront like with Discord and Makarov. In a way it makes her more frightening, as she feels more off than over the top.

B

• Back for the Finale:
  • Rainbow Dash and the Princesses return in the Dark World Series' Grand Finale just in time to help fight the Final Battle with Nightmare Paradox..
  • Trixie returns to help fight in the Wedding and Finale Arcs after being missing since Princess Gaia.
• Back from the Dead:
  • Apparently happened to Tirek offscreen over 1000 years ago. The Rainbow Of Darkness regenerated and brought him back to life with it, after which he challenged Luna for the title of ruler of the night. While we don't learn the details, Luna won and claimed his chariot as her prize.
  • One of the Recursive Fanfictions contains a more back from the nonexistence example. After being RetGoned from the Pony POV universe by Entropy for refusing to become a Nightmare, Neo Stream is "reborn" in...the Garry's Mod verse!
  • It should be noted this is normally a defied trope; Mortis apparently specifically has a rule against this happening and is said to have good reason for it. Celestia and Luna's second life on Equus is specifically said to be cheating and something that normally wouldn't happen. How Tirek did it is presently unknown.
  • Mortis permits Queen Libra to do this with all those who died as a result of Discord's evil in Dark World who desire to come back (those who die of old age or unrelated causes couldn't). Among them are Granny Smith, Scootaloo, Gilda, Magica, Poison Apple, Tom, and Sparkler. Sadly Applebloom and Sweetie Belle died of old age, and couldn't be resurrected, while Pinkie Pie died of Rapid Aging and Fluttershy has those that still need her.
  • Dima, Gilda, and the rest of Makarov's victims all are restored when he's destroyed. Justified as Makarov's erased from history, repairing all the damage he'd caused, including those who's lives he ended.
  • The Blank Wolf resurrects during the Finale Arc, presumably in reaction to Discord's ultimate plan. It protects Sweetie Belle during the beginnings of the plan. It can be assumed this is because, according to what seems to be Havoc and Entropy, the Crusaders may be the only ones capable of stopping the plan. Though it came back a puppy, it still proves more than a match for the entities performing Discord's plan.
  • In sense, Puzzlemint does this during the Final Arc. AK Yearling had her reincarnated Light of Existence, so when the two were merged back together to form a REAL Daring Do (as part of Pandora's plan to protect people while the CMC contend with Discord's plan, in a sense G3 Puzzlemint was recreated, though as something much more.
  • Ditto for Toola Roola. Applebloom has her Light of Existence, so when the two fuse back together, Applebloom is in a sense Toola Roola recreated with their combined abilities.
  • The Elders choose to resurrect Button Mash from the Rumors timeline to reward him for his heroism.
  • Apple Bloom restores the G3 Ponies who weren't already Reincarnated into someone else as part of her Cosmic Retcon as caretakers of Pinkie's G3 inspired public park, agreeing with most of the Concepts they didn't deserve their fate.
• Backstory Invader:
  • Makarov is this, as he's actually an Eldritch Abomination capable of forcing himself into 'stories' that aren't his.
  • It is eventually revealed that Shining Armor literally didn't exist before he was introduced, and once he appeared, the timeline adjusted itself both past and future to accommodate him. When he finds out, it's a Tomato in the Mirror moment for him.
  • During the Finale Arc, Button acts like he's always been Sweetie Belle's coltfriend and the Crusaders' Sixth Ranger. However, this is because from his perspective, it really had always been that way.
  • Also during the Finale Arc, Maud Pie is really the amnesiac avatar of Entropy, the Goddess of Nothingness and Endings. Upon her arrival, characters briefly question who she is before their memories are rewritten so that they believe she is Pinkie Pie's older sister. As Maud doesn't remember being Entropy and only remembers being Maud, she genuinely believes she is Pinkie Pie's older sister.
• Back to Front: Shining Armor's backstory was told this way, due to the fact it is happening backwards from where he was inserted into the timeline.
• Backup from Otherworld:
  • The Dark World Arc has the loved ones of the mane six return from beyond the grave to help guide the mane six back from their corruption. Cadence (possibly Trixie, it's kind of unclear) help Twilight, Apple Bloom helps Applejack, Sweetie Belle helps Rarity, and Scootaloo helps Rainbow Dash. Though out of all of them, Sweetie Belle is the only one to physically manifest, in the form of one of Rarity's golemns. Later on, Roseluck, a former companion of the Doctor, returns during the fight with the Valeyard using the same method as Sweetie Belle and actually physically joins in the fight (though her physical form is destroyed) and guides Rarity to the Valeyard's regeneration template, as well as entering his body and helping restrain him.
  • Dark World!Fluttershy returns to hold back Cruelty's spirit after her second body's destroyed, allowing the heroes to use the Elements to banish her from the mortal plain. Pinkie Pie also does this, since she died during the battle, but her spirit blocks Cruelty from possessing Twilight, setting up Fluttershy's.
  • During the Final Battle with Nightmare Paradox, Discord distracts the Nightmare to give Twilight time to power up the final spell to defeat her once and for all. By calling her on Anarchy's cellphone from the afterlife. And Trolling her until she's so enraged she forgets she's in the middle of a battle.
• Badass Boast:
  • Mimic to Discord in "Origins" right before her Dying Moment of Awesome:
    Mimic: You float one inch towards my daughters I will kill you and seal your spirit in one of my horseshoes!
  • Rota Fortuna gives one to the Eldritch Abominations she helped seal away in Tartarus.
    Rota Fortuna: You should leave all the same. Or would you rather I 'kick your flanks', as she so eloquently put it, again?
  • Subverted with Shining Armor in 17.2. Shining tries to make one after escaping Makarov's clutches, but it falls flat when the Griffins he's talking to have no idea what he's talking about. Double Subverted when Makarov's flagship blows up in the distance and confirms his boast.
    Sandgriff: We thought you were being held in that fortress.
    Shining Armor: Makarov threatened my little sister, so I blew it up.
    Sandgriff: ...The completely intact fortress to the south?
    Shining Armor: Uh, sorry, it was a big ship, I forgot it was a ship.
    Natasha: Eh, easy mistake, it was pretty much a flying fortress.
    Shining Armor: It's still bad flank I blew it up, right?
    Frost: Blew what up?
  • He does get a good one the following chapter, however, after rescuing the rest of Misfit Actual.
    Captive Audience: But... how did you get here?
    Shining Armor: By kicking everyone's flanks that got in my way.
  • Chrysalis gives an epic one to the Unicorn Interviewer in the Wedding Arc after the latter is freed from her control:
    "I knew fate would contort and twist back upon itself before ever allowing me to claim my hard earned victory. But tell fate this, Half-Light Dusk. If the game will cheat before letting me win, I simply have to change the rules. I WILL stand on equal footing with her. I will no longer be her or anyling else's slave. Not her, not Cocoon's, not my flesh, and most certainly not that mad creature that thinks himself king of everything. He's next on my list. So tell me I am doomed, tell me I have no chance of winning, that I never had any chance of winning, I've heard it many times before, and I have proven them all wrong! I always grant those who look down on me their just reward. Send me to Hell and I SWEAR by every changeling that has ever lived, I will devour it from the inside out like a cancer! Tell me an infinite number of others have made the same boast and failed and were but toys for Havoc in the end, I will be the one to make that boast reality! Lock the gates of Heaven and I will break through them! Dump me in Oblivion and I will claw my own way out! I've come too far, I have struggled for too long, to see all I have made with literal sweat, blood, and tears, to crumble to dust now. I refuse to lose!"
  • Featherweight of all people manages to get one against Nightmare Diamond Tiara when his Stealth Expert skills blindside her.
    Featherweight: I guess I'm just better at being stealthy than you. I got away from you without being noticed once already.
• Badass Pacifist:
  • Fluttershy, naturally, counts as one until she becomes Nightmare Whisper. She manages to subdue Fluttercruel in a completely nonviolent fashion. Also shows it during the Wedding where she weaponizes dodging.
  • Mother Deer, the Mother Goddess of the Deer and physical incarnation of the Tree of Harmony. She managed to convince several Hooviets pull a genuine Mook–Face Turn just by talking to them.
  • The Brotherhood of the Scorpion. While a group of pacifists who have frightening tastes, they still managed to out coup the Hooviets and take control Maasailand.
• Badass Santa: In the Dark World timeline, the Equestrian Santa Claus breaks into Discord's fortress yearly to read aloud his naughty list and distribute lumps of coal.
• Bad Future:
  • "Epilogue" shows one where Discord won and rules the world. It's not pretty.
  • It turns out there's a Bad Future for the Bad Future in the futures Nightmare Paradox comes from where Twilight goes Nightmare and erases Dark World to continue the "Groundhog Day" Loop she trapped Discord in. From what we see, the set up for some of those is worse than the Dark World in that typically either some or all the mane cast minus Twilight dies fighting Discord or there's planet wide destruction and death in some fashion.
  • We see another one in Luna's second sidestory. Luna turns evil again, kills and revives Pip as an immortal undead, and attempts to kill Celestia, killing a number of innocent ponies in the process, only for Celestia to ultimately kill her to protect Equestria. Turns out it was All Just a Dream, or at least a vision of a possible future.
  • To some degree the present is this, particularly for the Deer. The Shadow of Chernobull was released from Pandora's Box and became General-Admiral Makarov, who altered history so that the Hooviet Empire never collapsed, resulting in not only a horrific military dictatorship remaining in power for 20 years longer than it should have, but all the atrocities that Makarov and the Hooviets have caused since. The goal of the Rebels and Shining is to lure the Wolf to Makarov so it can erase him from existence and Set Right What Once Went Wrong.
  • Cadence receives a vision of what will happen if Chrysalis wins, and it certainly counts. Chrysalis activated a rune that rips the emotions out of every creature in Equestria and absorbs it, becoming a being strong enough to overpower Discord and conquer the world, reducing all other sapient beings to slaves, turning Sweetie Belle into The Dragon, and remaking the Changelings into her own twisted version of perfection. Cadence is naturally horrified by this.
• Badly Battered Babysitter: The two Night Guards Luna leaves in charge of the four Day Guard Pegasi turned foals end up this way.
• Bait-and-Switch Time Skip: The reveal of the Draconequi in the Dark World timeline, for the first time appear not in flashback, was supposed to be this, with them seeming to have undergone serious changes...which actually aren't. Including Pandora wearing an eyepatch in Shout-Out to The Order of the Stick.
• Balance Between Good and Evil: Discussed in the opening narration of 'Storming the Castle', which says that there's no such thing, it is merely something certain wicked people justify their actions; saying for every hero there must be a villain.
• Bargain with Heaven:
  • Joining the Royal Guard seems to work this way. It involves being infused with a bit of the Princesses power (each do half) with a bit of transformation involved, more for Luna's than Celestia. However, the contract is very thorough about this (at least in Luna's case, it's in big bold letters across two pages in size 40 font, complete with before and after pictures) and applicants know exactly what they're getting into.
  • During the Finale Arc, Pandora makes one with AK Yearling and Puzzlemints' Shadow of Existence: become the true Daring Do and defend innocent ponies from Discord's end game (since should anyone die before the Crusaders can stop Discord's plan, they stay dead). Yearling gets a chance to live out her fantasy of being a hero and has a chance to protect her family and friends by casting them 'roles' in her story (as becoming Daring Do creates a 'bubble' like any of the stories floating in the fog), while Puzzlemint becomes real again. Notably, Pandora offers to keep Yearling safe and happy should she choose not to take the bargain. In the end, the two accept and merge together into the true Daring Do.
• Battle Couple:
  • Cadence and Shining Armor are naturally this trope, as in canon.
  • Gag and Garnet have their moments, but since they're in a unit, it isn't as noticeable as other examples.
  • Dark World!Spike and Rarity also qualify, after admitting their feelings for one another.
  • During the Final Battle of the Age of Myths (G1), Katrina and Rep (now Happily Married) are one of these when Gondor Calls for Aid. They kill Ashley, one of Hydia's dangerous family, by sending her falling to her death with a Fast Ball Special.
  • Alula tries to be this with Truffle, but because she used the Rumors to force him to be her love interest it doesn't really count and he loses to Button Mash and she stops only brings him along for that one time.
  • Button Mash and Sweetie Belle become this later in the arc.
• Batman Gambit:
  • How Celestia convinces Trixie to stop fighting her awakening Element Of Magic.
  • The Dark World!Mane Cast use one to defeat Nightmare Eclipse. They launch an all out attack that seemingly kills her and her Nightmares...only for Eclipse to rewind time and counter it. Which is exactly what they wanted her to do, allowing Twilight to copy her time spell and use it against her.
• Battle in the Center of the Mind: Pinkie Pie has one against an evil fractured piece of her personality called Angry Pie caused by Discord's corruption. The final battle with Loneliness takes place in the center of Trixie's mind, which has been rendered a Crapsack World by Loneliness' taint.
• Battle Trophy:
  • Luna took Tirek's chariot after killing him when he resurrected.
  • Chrysalis took a part of Cocoon's crown after killing her. Cadence eventually gets it.
• Be All My Sins Remembered:
  • Despite the fact there are a great many ponies who love her for what she did, Fluttershy outright says in her speech she'll accept rather whether ponies choose to love her for the good she did or hate her for the bad.
    Fluttershy: I didn't do everything right, I did bad things I don't know if I'll ever stop regretting. Some ponies won't ever forgive me for those things and maybe they're right to. I'm sorry for those things, but I wanted to help ponies, and it looks like I did. And I'm happy I was able to. And for everyone hearing this, if you'll take me back for what I accomplished, I'll accept that. If you won't take me back for what I did, I'll accept that too. I make no excuses, what I did I did and I was being a foal.
  • Cadence tells the changelings to remember Chrysalis as she truly was, not whitewashing her or demonizing her.
• Be Careful What You Wish For:
  • Golden Tiara makes a wish at one point to be the kind of pony who would have never snapped and hurt Diamond. She ends up in Spoiled Rich's body and grows more and more horrified by her new self's behavior, finally snapping at the sight of her little girl being terrified of her and proceeding to beat the crap out of Spoiled.
  • Diamond wanted Discord to heal her mother of her insanity. He does, but by then he's driven Diamond insane to the point she becomes The Dragon to him, leaving Diamond incapable of enjoying having her mother back.
• Became Their Own Antithesis:
  • Silver Spoon goes from Diamond Tiara's toady and the CMC's tormentor to the CMC's Sixth Ranger and standing up to Diamond Tiara in the final battle in order to save her.
  • Discord became Dissy, a loving, caring son of Shady. Prime Discord becomes him permanently after the Final Battle.
  • Chrysalis is reborn as an innocent, adorable infant after her demise.
  • Nightmare Eclipse was originally Twilight, having gone from a heroic person who loves her friends unconditionally to an Omnicidal Maniac who ha given up hope on Dark World being saved and is willing to force her friends to become Nightmares whether they want to or not.
• Being Evil Sucks:
  • In the Epilogue/Dark World timeline, Liarjack, Traitor Dash, and Twilight Tragedy all hate what they've become, but Liarjack and Traitor Dash can do nothing about it, while Tragedy has effectively given up all hope and feels her service to Discord is all she has left. Averted with Angry Pie and Fluttercruel, who not only embrace their newfound evil, but relish in it.
  • The Nightmare Manacle and Mirror in Paradox's group Psycho Rangers are the same way; Manacle still loathes herself possibly worse than Traitor Dash did and Mirror? She's completely aware of how horrific the Nightmares' actions are and knows they're earning a spot in Hell for it. The only thing she has left is the idea The Extremist Was Right and their world in the end will be worth it.
    Derpy: You pill hate yourself, won't blue, Rainbow Dash?
    Nightmare Manacle: I never stopped!
  • General Hercules Beetle seems to be this. He's not a villain because he's evil, and sincerely wishes things didn't have to be this way, but is honor bound to the oaths he made to his Queens.
  • Diamond is not happy in any way shape or form to be a Nightmare and it's clear she's completely miserable.
• Being God Is Hard: Concepts have extrodinary power, but one of the hardest things they have is Eternal Burden. They can never have Eternal Rest like mortals who deserve Heaven. At best, they have some rest, but only for awhile.
• Beneath the Mask:
  • Underneath what appeared to be the perfect Princess Gaia was a suffering monster: Nightmare Whisper.
  • Beneath that? Fluttershy in torture devices, holding all the suffering and pain of Equestria in herself.
  • Chrysalis plays herself up as a loving queen to her Changelings, but in actually loathes them. she only uses them because they're useful. She also hates herself for being Cadenza's cast off shell and feeling incomplete.
• Berserk Button:
  • Don't call Trixie a "half-dirt unicorn".
  • Chrysalis can't stand being underestimated.
• Better Than New: Happens to Pinkie Pie during her week long slumber after she finally crashes from going a week without sleep. She wakes up able to think clearly and say things so profound (though still in character) that even Twilight is incapable of arguing her points. This happened because during that time she performed a Split-Personality Merge.
• Beware the Nice Ones:
  • Fluttershy, or should we say Princess Gaia.
  • Shining Armor and Princess Cadence. Despite being very nice Reasonable Authority Figures who would very much prefer a peaceful resolution to any conflict, do not harm innocents around either of them. General-Admiral Makarov found this out the hard way with Cadence when she powered up using the bonds of Misfit Actual to stop him from slaughtering a village and curbstomped him. Shining? He crushed a Diamond Dog to death when it killed his uncle in front of him and when Makarov tried to repeat it with Twilight, smashed Makarov's Doomsday Device and almost crushed him to death.
    • Shining ultimately feeds Makarov to the Wolf, erasing him from existence. Shining might be a nice guy, but do not buck with him! Also justified, as Makarov's erasure ensures everyone he ever killed or devoured will be okay.
  • Cadence ultimately takes over the Changelings by defeating Chrysalis in battle, then gives Professor Kabuto, easily the most monstrous Changeling in existence with a list of atrocities going back centuries a dose of Cruel Mercy. While she refuses to kill him, she chooses instead of have him imprisoned in the sun for however many years his victims would have lived if he hadn't killed them.
  • The Cutie Mark Crusaders can be this if provoked. Discord learned this the hard way.
  • Ponykind (or at least Equestria) in general seems to be this. They can basically be described as a race of pacifists who want to befriend the entire world and consider the idea of killing as something that, at best, is a last resort. Despite this, when threatened by an evil force, they're no less capable of kicking flank than anycreature else, and have consistently held their own against threats from monsters like Tirek and Lavan to military Empires like the Hooviets and the Changelings. They just prefer to exhaust the possibilities for a peaceful resolution before kicking your flank and are likely to offer a hoof of friendship after doing so..
• Beware the Silly Ones:
  • Discord, as in canon.
  • General-Admiral Makarov, the Big Bad of the Shining Armor Arc. Despite being a Psychopathic Manchild Large Ham who throws a temper tantrum anytime things don't go his way, he's still leader of one of the largest and most powerful military groups on planet with high tech weapons, and no restraint in using them to murder people for the pettiest of reasons. He's also strong enough to deliver a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown on Shining Armor without breaking a sweat. He's actually an Equinoid Abomination with Reality Warper and Charm Person powers who escaped Pandora's Box and is trying to take over the story itself. He's even capable of erasing entire races from existence with a sentence. When his endgame begins, he's murdered several thousand if not million innocents and started a world war.
• BFG: The Shining Armor Arc has a few:
  • Natasha, the sniper among the Rebel Deer, has a modified sniper rifle that shoots 14mm rounds (which are Heavy Machine Gun rounds). It's named Sasha.
  • Makarov has a massive horncannon of his own. It's gold plated. It gets progressively more gaudy as the story progresses.
• Big Bad:
  • Loneliness for the overarching plot with fixing Trixie. She's an entity that was keeping Trixie from being saved after Discord broke her. When Twilight enters Trixie's mind to free her, she ends up trying to kill her repeatedly to keep Trixie under her clutches until she's finally destroyed by Trixie rejecting her. Unfortunately, Discord's Mind Rape on Diamond Tiara causes her to free him and let him take over as the main villain.
  • However, before his arc happens, Fluttershy's Superpowered Evil Side Princess Gaia/Nightmare Whisper serves as the Big Bad for her self titled story arc.
  • "Origins", being a prequel, naturally has Discord as the Big Bad.
  • Discord in the Dark World Arc. Though the Valeyard's Final Speech implies he might not be the only one.
    • As of "The Real Hoof Blues", it would appear The Voice is the Big Bad of which he spoke. She even makes an attempt to corrupt Twilight into a She Who Fights Monsters Nightmare. It is later revealed that she's a version of Twilight who already became what she tried to make Twilight into and Twilight's potential future self, Nightmare Eclipse/Paradox.
    • Then, Discord is stabbed In the Back by Rancor, who steals Destruction's power back and leaves him mortally wounded. He gives his power and the power of Havoc's Avatar to Fluttercruel. She then becomes the Dragon Ascendant and attacks the heroes of her own free will with the motivation of using the Elements of Chaos to save her father's life.
  • General-Admiral Makarov/The Shadow of Chernobull for Shining Armor's arc.
    • The Wolf is another Big Bad, being an Animalistic Abomination that has tracked Shining Armor across entire countries attempting to erase him from existence and which nothing can seem to stop. After Makarov's demise at its claws, it appears the Wolf might still be after Shining, becoming the Big Bad proper.
    • Also from the Shining Armor Arc, The Master is this from Minuette's perspective, having spent the entire story trying to influence her to open her fob watch and become him again and since The Reveal, actively trying to tempt her into doing so every chance he gets. Not a Big Bad Ensemble in that, at present, Shining Armor is unaware of his existence and he's not threatening Shining deirectly like Makarov and the Wolf have. Like the Wolf, he's defeated in the Grand Finale of the Arc.
  • Sharp Spear in the last leg of Melody's '7 Dreams/Nightmares' Chapter. Even if he only appears in person for one scene, he's still more or less responsible for nearly everything bad that happens to Melody's family after her daughter's birth due to his Fantastic Racism including basically kidnapping her daughter and unlike the villains in Patch's tale, is the only antagonistic force in the storyline.
  • D___t's Shadow of Existence in Bright Eyes' Nightmares section. He tries to devour Zipzee at the end of G3 by forcing her over the Despair Event Horizon so he could take her infant Concept and become real again. After that failed, he spent the entirety of the Nightmares section stalking her, trying to increase her feelings of depression and fear to do the same before finally trying to take her Concept by force to become real, forcing her to destroy him completely.
  • Queen Cocoon, Chrysalis' predecessor, serves as this for Chrysalis' Origins Episode, despite Chrysalis being the Villain Protagonist at the time.
  • Chrysalis for the Wedding Arc, as in canon.
  • If the scenes during the Wedding Arc are to be believed, Discord and his cousin Umbra Breeze seem to be sharing this role for the Finale Arc. While they're working together, it's clear Umbra isn't Discord's minion, so much as working with him for his own ends and their goal is want they both desire, as Umbra was more than willing to just leave Discord and Nightmare Diamond Tiara behind to continue the plan himself when Diamond nearly got petrified by Queen Cadenza. Diamond, now Nightmare Nihilis, ultimately usurps Discord when he has a Heel Realization and becomes the final boss, with Applejack defeating Umbra in Rumors.
  • Eclipse's Nightmare Whisper serves as this for the Rainbow Dash sub arc of the finale arc, being the one controlling the fake Ponyville her fellow Nightmares and the ponies she and Manacle saved from the various Dark World loops are trapped in.
• Big Bad Wannabe:
  • The Valeyard in Dark World. He's an Evil Genius and the embodiment of all the Doctor's evil, plotting to overthrow Discord and conquer all creation, but is ultimately a far lesser threat than Discord and Nightmare Eclipse and defeated long before the Final Battle. It also doesn't help him that he lost the Doctor's ability to Indy Ploy.
  • General Lone Ranger for the Wedding. While undoubtedly dangerous, insane, and having plans of his own to start a war to encourage ponies to become a Proud Warrior Race, as well as wipe out the Changelings, he's ultimately an Unwitting Pawn to Chrysalis' plans, and by the time he's actually confronted events have taken such a physical and psychological tole on him that he is easily subdued.
• Big Damn Heroes:
  • Fluttercruel in "The Foal of Omelas", who tears herself out of her tormented oblivion and comes to the Mane Cast's aid just in time, letting them use the Elements Of Harmony to defeat Nightmare Whisper.
  • Dark World!Rainbow Dash does this twice during the battle with Odyne!Cruelty, first by shattering her Ultimate Stare and saving the group, then by plowing through several walls and delivering a Sonic Rainboom tackle to Cruelty's back to save Rarity.
    • Does so again, accompanied by the Princesses (who she flew up into space to recharge directly from the sun and moon), during the Final Battle, arriving in time to save the group from Paradox and her Psycho Rangers.
  • In Bright Eye's Gaiden Story, Logan saves Lancer and Bright Eyes from an Ahool using the Yellow Shard of the Rainbow of Light to calm it down before it can kill Lancer.
    • Later its revealed that some kind of deer deity saved Bright Eyes from some coyotes when she was a filly, which caused her to develop her environmentalist views.
  • Twinkle Shine and company due this at the end of Chapter 10 of the Wedding Arc, after Chrysalis has managed to barely beat Celestia and repel Luna's counterattack via Shining's shield supercharged by her magic.
  • Trixie comes to Cadence's aid during her fight with a Brainwashed and Crazy Twilight Sparkle, throwing a wrench in Chrysalis' plans.
  • Button Mash and Featherweight make one of these when they show up to save Applebloom during the confrontation with Nightmare Diamond Tiara.
• Big Entrance:
  • Fighting your way through a portal while demonic beasts try to drag you back inside to make a Big Damn Heroes moment? Fluttercruel certainly knows how to make an entrance!
  • Trixie tends to make these whenever she physically can. Comically parodied when her doing so during the wedding arc causes a misunderstanding with her friends.
  • Discord, being Discord, naturally gives himself one when arriving for the Final Battle.
• The Big Damn Kiss: Garnet gives on to Running Gag after he uses his language skills to trick some Hooviet mercenaries into going the wrong direction, allowing Misfit and the Doctor to escape without a fight. To add to the awesomeness, Cadence promotes him on the spot.
• Big Good:
  • Princess Gaia considers herself as this. In reality, however...
  • Fauna Luster and the Father of All Alicorns for the Alicorns, and the multiverse in general. It turns out the Draconequi Elders are also this, just Good Is Not Nice.
  • The Benevolent Interloper in Dark World qualifies, acting both to counteract Nightmare Eclipse/Paradox influence with good advice and acting as Mission Control during the Final Battle.
  • Mother Deer, the Mother Goddess of the Deer, serves as this for the Rebels against the Hooviet Empire, and by extension, their ally Shining Armor.
  • In a bit of irony, Havoc and Entropy seem to be taking this role in the finale arc to a degree, at least so far, giving the Crusaders a run down of what's happening and protecting them from the World-Wrecking Wave Discord and his allies set off.
• Big "NO!":
  • The undead foal inside Nightmare Whisper's crystal heart lets one out when Fluttercruel's Element Of Kindness manifests, allowing the Mane Cast to utilize the Elements against her.
  • Makarov/The Shadow of Chernobull lets out two when he realizes that a dying Gilda is about to blow up the Iron Curtain with a grenade launcher.
  • The Master lets one out as Minuette feeds him to the Blank Wolf.
• Big, Screwed-Up Family: The Draconequi, as to be expected from Eldritch Abominations that operate on Blue-and-Orange Morality.
• Big Sister Instinct:
  • Rarity will end you if you try to do anything to harm Sweetie Belle.
  • In the alternate Story of the Blanks timeline where the bone fiends got Apple Bloom, Applejack "proceeded to tear Sunnytown to its foundations and [buck] the head off of any zombie pony that got in her way."
• Bishōnen Line:
  • Loneliness' final form is a clone of the Great and Powerful Trixie.
  • Queen Cocoon pulls this after Chrysalis defeats her One-Winged Angel form, transferring her soul to a fresh clone and emerging as what amounts to a clone of Chrysalis (minus her 'deviant' eyes).
  • Ironically, Chrysalis herself ends up doing the exact same thing, her final form being an Evil Twin of Cadence (with some minor differences) named Cadenza due to being completed by the Elements of Harmony on account of her being the original Cadenza's Shadow of Existance.
• Bittersweet Ending:
  • Word of God has stated they wish to turn the Epilogue timeline into one of these, and several fans have already tried.
  • The Dark World Series eventually ended this way. The world is saved, the Chaos Six have all been redeemed, Spike and Rarity are Happily Married, the ecological damage from Discord is fixed, and Queen Libra is permitted to bring back anyone who died from Discord's evil if they desire it. However, Fluttershy, Pinkie Pie, Applebloom, and Sweetie Belle were Killed Off for Real, Twilight and Rarity have become Alicorns to make it possible, meaning they've given up any chance of ever being reunited with their loved one in Pony Heaven, and Twilight has to leave to perform her duty as Concept of Magic and Happy Endings.
  • The Nightmare Granfalloon timeline. Yes, half the mane cast are dead, and Granfalloon's rampage caused a lot of pain, but Golden Tiara is sane again and reunited with her family, meaning that Diamond Tiara won't let Discord out of his prison again. On top of that, Word of God confirmed that Fluttershy in this timeline never becomes Nightmare Whisper.
  • Depending on how you look at it, "Generational Transitions" ends like this. Yeah, the G3 world ended, but the universe was saved from dying for good, meaning a new one will take its place. Plus, even though Minty died Pinkie saved her from being deleted, allowing her to live on as part of Twilight Sparkle, and was saved from deletion herself. Apple Bloom later makes it a more proper one by resurrecting the G3 ponies who's Shadows hadn't Reincarnted as caretakers for Pinkie Pie's G3 inspired park.
• Black Comedy: When the Dark World arc isn't being horrifying or just plain depressing, its this, especially in later chapters.
• Blasphemous Boast:
  • In Dark World, the Valeyard does these quite frequently, as he believes himself higher than the Elders.
  • According to a Loose Canon Recursive Fanfiction story, Havoc actually keeps track of how many times He'd heard certain Blasphemous Boast from people condemned to His domain. He even tells the Valeyard exactly how many times he'd heard each of his.
    Havoc: I Heard Your Rant About Villains Not Playing By The Rules 325,285,347 Times, Your Claim About Perfection 186,032 times, Your Speech About Life 432,874,222 times, Your Declaration Of Controlling The Universe 987,873,365,321 Times But Your Final Speech Was Something New For Once.
  • Nightmare Eclipse's claim she chose her name for eclipsing Celestia and Luna and exceeding them is considered this by the Dark World!Mane Cast. She also claims to be above all the other Gods and outright states she's going to destroy the Goddess of Fate.
  • Queen Chrysalis' Villain Song in chapter 16 of the Wedding Arc starts with one of these:
    Queen Chrysalis: I am mightier than the Sun,/More cunning than the Chaos./More beautiful than Harmony,/I put her face to shame" .
• Blood Bath Villain Origin:
  • Chrysalis slaughtered her entire village the night her Start of Darkness happened.
  • Tirek has a truly horrifying one: after absorbing Pandora's Box full of dark magic, he slaughters his entire species, ending by sadistically torturing his own family to death.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality:
  • The Draconequi have a form of this. Their role in creation makes it impossible for them to have the same moral framework as Alicorns and ponies, but they still have a form of love that allows them compassion and they do each have some degree of empathy and compassion, without which they'd be...well, Discord. They also enjoy chaos because they're born from it. They're ultimately how they are because it's what their Concepts require them to be, nothing more, and don't take any joy in causing harm. But even by their morality, Discord's is black and doesn't so much enjoy causing chaos as the suffering he inflicts while doing so.
  • Also applies to Dragons (minus Spike) and Diamond Dogs. Both of which are stated to be instinctively greedy beings and thus their form of morality revolves around it, but neither are not completely selfish or immoral. They consider their loved ones possessions, and thus extend their protectiveness of their possessions to them. Diamond Dogs also are willing to die for their pack (including adopted members).
  • This is the entire reason that the world is scared to death of Maasailand. The country simply have somewhat inverted perceptions of what other cultures think of as symbols of good and evil. So what they think makes them look like a peaceful, beautiful place to live makes them look like Mordor to the rest of the world.
  • The Outer Concepts as a whole all have this to the point they can't even comprehend each other's morality.
• Body Horror:
  • Nightmare Whisper, who's true form is hideously mutated due to all the suffering and pain she absorbed. Applebloom tonned it down a bit with her Cosmic Retcon.
  • Lots and lots of this are involved in Discord's games.
  • Garnet, being medic with knowledge of biology, realizes this trope applies to Kabuto's additional limbs implanted into his back. The thought of how he got them (on top of the poor Changelings he killed perfecting it) literally makes her ill. What we've seen of Kabuto's experiments imply this is abundant in them.
  • The death of the Sirens' sister Oratorio Waltz: she was partially mutated by the blast, resulting in misshapen limbs, some of her skin being missing and, certain parts of her body (implied to be orgias) implied to be exposed. She dies soon after, but given the condition she was in that was probably merciful.
  • The Sirens' transformation could count, given they're not magical beings who were born that way, but mutations resulting from the Tales disaster.
• Bolt of Divine Retribution: Princess Luna starts talking about the heroism of Megan Williams and her friends. When Trixie doesn't believe in that story, Luna gets annoyed and Trixie suddenly gets zapped by lightning on a clear day, though not badly enough to actually hurt her.
• Book Ends: The first glimpse of hope we see for the Dark World is Apple Pie saying "Hey, even in the darkest of times you hav'ta find something to laugh about!" She and Twilight say it again as their goodbye to one another as Twilight leaves Dark World after they've finally saved it.
• Boom, Headshot!: Dima tries to execute Makarov this way, but Makarov uses his powers to pull an Actually a Doombot.
• Boss Rush: Defied. In the World Tower, there's one of these set up, but Applebloom uses the Truth to defeat it instead by asking what the point of them is.
• Both Order and Chaos are Dangerous:
  • In Dark World, Discord represents chaos and Grogar represents order, with both being just as evil in different ways.
  • Morning Star desires a perfectly orderly universe as he sees it while D__t desires all things that inhibit mortals from doing whatever they want to to be eradicated. Both are evil, and both despise the other.
• Brainwashing for the Greater Good: Princess Gaia's favorite trick. No one else agrees.
• Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick: When Applejack recounts Applebloom's adventure in Canterlot to the reader:
  Applejack: It involved Applebloom spookin' every Pegasus in armor around, a royal fountain, Applebloom needin' to redefine her meanin' of 'public bath' . . . and Ah think the ghost of a Hippocampus and a lost family locket but Ah kinda ain't sure 'bout them details.
• Breaking the Fourth Wall:
  • Pinkie Pie does this all the time.
  • Princess Gaia has answered quite a few readers comments personally... And attempted to trap the writer of them in her Lotus-Eater Machine. She's even personally requested a few edits to this very page herself...
  • And now it's getting better. Discord has taken to responding to some comments, taunting and mocking the writers of them as he boasts of things such as he's become immune to the Elements of Harmony.
    Discord: "Oh, but you all LOVED it when Princess Gaia did it! Don't worry, Shadows-Who-Watch, I'm sure you'll be delighted to see me one again doing to all Equestria what I've done to Diamond Tiara! Isn't that right, my little pony?"
  • And then in the Dark World arc there were several occasions where Angry Pie, Fluttercruel, and Twilight Tragedy responded to comments by the readers, usually either to mock or threaten them. Even Supreme Kahuna Discord gets in on it later on, in an oddly depressed sounding way. It makes sense when we discover what's really going on.
  • Played for Drama with Nightmare!Diamond, who is well aware of the audience and believes if she's not evil, her mother will have to be to satisfy them.
• Break the Cutie: Obviously, but Trixie and Diamond Tiara take the cake, especially the latter.
• Break the Haughty: Trixie also has shades of this.
• Breather Episode:
  • The first half of the Penultimate episode comes right after the climatic, and terrifying, battle with Loneliness and Fluttershy going all Nightmare Moon, but is just, for all intent and purposes, the cast just getting to know the "One and Only Trixie".
  • Also, New Game Plus. In between the first part of Mind Games, which is a tense 3 part series about Onyx Tiara healing while Diamond Tiara seeks to restore Discord, and the rest of the mind games which will arc into the finale arc, we have a brief interlude letting the author link the episodes not yet covered into the main story. There are certainly serious moments, but the overall tone is MUCH Lighter in comparison.
  • "Different From Everypony Else" is set immediately after "New Game Plus", but was published between the last two installments of Mind Games. It has its dark moments, but is ultimately very heartwarming, and even the dark moments don't compare to the content of Mind Games.
  • "ecnarbmemeR-Remembrance", a rather normal, lighthearted episode following Shining Armor was published right after the Darkest Hour of the Dark World Arc. While there are some creepy aspects, it's pretty much just a relaxing little chapter.
  • "Family Reunion" is about as lighthearted as it gets in the Dark World arc: before meeting the Apple/Pie family to recruit Apple Pie as the new Element of Laughter, Twilight and the gang decide to make themselves look more presentable by taking a bath; Hilarity Ensues as they try to bathe Rarigreed, the filthiest of the gang after spending a thousand years wallowing in rocks and dirt. Even their meeting with the family that follows goes over fairly smoothly (that is, as smoothly as things can get after some of the family members greet them with a few cautionary explosives).
  • "Retcon-Struction Blues" is sandwiched between two Dark World Chapters, one being the beginning of an all out brawl between Discord's remaining minions and the heroes, and the other being the continuation of that battle and a major Wham Episode. The chapter itself is about Twilight reconciling with the CMC from the Smartypants Incident.
  • Shining Armor Part 11 is a short, uncomplicated story about the trip to, and the group enjoying their first day in, the zebra nation Zamura. This comes right after all the drama Shining went through in Columbia, and is posted right after the Dark World Mane Cast confront Nightmare Eclipse/Paradox.
  • "A Day at the Circus" is simply the mane six and the CMC enjoying a day at the circus. While it's a Loose Canon Recursive Fanfiction, the author fully intended it to be one of these for everyone, from himself and Alexwarlorn and the audience to the characters themselves.
  • Wedding 19 is simply the mane six reconciling and recuperating after rescuing Twilight and Spike.
  • The CMC get a break at Lickity Split's house during the Rumors.
  • Most of the chapters between the Rumors Arc's ending and the beginning of the Final Battle are this.
• Brick Joke:
  • In Shining Armor's story; in part 1, during Blueblood's Verbal Backpedaling (after insulting Twilight in front of Shining), he says he was actually thinking of a Twilight Sharkle, who he then accidentally says is a shark. In part 11, a Major Dawn Sharkle is briefly mentioned, and the unit she's in has a title that spells SHARC.
  • Earlier in the Columbia saga, it's mentioned the country has 'no singing zones' due to random musical numbers causing traffic jams. Later on, Cadence's hoofmaidens had their own crazy adventure ending with them being arrested for singing in a no singing zone. Also, in part 11, before arriving in Zebrafrica, Cadence reassures the group no such law exists in Zebrafrica.
  • Also in Part 11, Shining mentions that Running Gag apparently gets attacked by every cat he meets. Later in the chapter, while Tempting Fate regarding Honey Badgers, Running Gag is promptly attacked by a cat.
  • When the Rumors twist reality, a lot of ponies are 'revealed' to really be changelings, including June Bug. After the Rumors are beaten and everything set right, it turns out she actually is a changeling.
• Bring My Brown Pants:
  • We're not told who, but one of the Mane Cast wets themselves in reaction to the undead foal inside Nightmare Whisper's heart.
  • Orangejack wets herself during the fight with Nightmare Mirror when the Nightmare reveals she's done this over forty times to alternate versions of them.
  • Dark World!Fluttercruel wet herself at the sight of a very large number of ponies lined up to get revenge on her. Justified as she's a foal at the time.
  • The CMC wet themselves while running away in terror from the Rumors. Justified, given what they're seeing.
• Broken Angel:
  • One pegasus that was driven insane in Cloudsdale by Discord ended up losing their wings. It's implied she chewed them off. As if we needed another reason to call Discord a sick buck.
  • Running Gag has one of his wings blown off by Makarov. While he survives (thanks to Garnet and the Power of Love), he is still clearly upset by it.
  • Havoc's Phobia avatar has broken wings, while Entropy's Mrs. Void avatar has a broken horn.
• Broken Pedestal:
  • Rainbow Dash is terrified of this happening with her if it becomes known that she abandoned the game in the maze to save Cloudsdale of her own free will.
  • Turns out, Spitfire had the same fear, after the repeated failures of the Wonderbolts to help in an actual emergency. She also shows concern what she tells Rainbow Dash about herself might do the same. She's wrong, and Rainbow tells her that she and the Wonderbolts are heroes, because their actions inspire others and, at the very least, they're still her heroes.
  • Kind of happens to Pandora when Strife tells her their brother D___t wasn't the good Draconequus she idolized and was instead a Well-Intentioned Extremist by Dragonequus standards.
• Broke Your Arm Punching Out Cthulhu:
  • Type two. Thistle Whistle rams Strife head on with all her power to save Sky Wishes...and shatters every bone in her entire body, killing her. Though she did save Sky Wishes' life and Strife even acknowledges her bravery for the act.
  • The Nameless Filly succeeded in killing Cupid and erasing him from existence. Unfortunately for her, Venus naturally wasn't happy about this and promptly descended to mortal reality and killed her easily. An alternate universe has Cupid's uncle Turris, the God of Defense, interfere in time and the Concept Killing Spear ends up snapping on Turris' unbreakable defense. She still keeps trying, only for Turris to turn the two halves of the Concept Killing Spear against each other, the resulting explosion killing her.
  • Applejack ends up punching Luna in the jaw upon hearing the truth of how Tirek got the Rainbow of Darkness. Luna, fully accepting she deserved Applejack's anger, rolls with the punch to AVOID this trope.]]
• Brought Down to Normal:
  • Dark World!Celestia and Dark World!Luna, due to their magic being drained during their imprisonment. While they can probably recharge, at present they're powerless until then. They recover later.
  • Everyone who gained powers from the Rumors lose them when the world is fixed with Fluttercruel (who ate the Rumors to evolve into a full Demi-Draconequus) and Sweetheart's family line (who Apple Bloom decided to give their powers permanently during the Cosmic Retcon), and possibly others Apple Bloom chose to let keep powers they gained if it was beneficial.
• Bullying a Dragon:
  • As one commented points out, the Hooviet-Dragon war occurred because the Hooviets did this literally, and the end result was the destruction of the entire southern half of their empire.
  • Twilight Velvet attacks Chrysalis in a Mama Bear rage, after the queen already defeated Celestia. It ends badly. Justified as she was blind with rage.
• But for Me, It Was Tuesday:
  • "Canterlot Chaos" has Discord say something to this effect about his multiple genocides. Subverted later when it's shown he does feel bad he wiped out the Sea Ponies, but will never admit it.
  • Nightmare Eclipse lost count of how many times she's erased the timeline. When Apple Pie asks how many times she let her twin sister die, Eclipse replies she doesn't keep track of all the 'NPCs'.
  • Tirek's minion Lancaster, who tried to kill him, explains his motive was Tirek destroyed his hometown of Crystal Port and killed his brother. Tirek's response is to state he doesn't remember that one. When Lancaster asks in shock how he can't remember, his answer?
    Tirek: Do you remember every ant you step on?

C

• Call-Back:
  • More have been showing up as the Dark World storyline comes to a close, especially in Part 20. Spike's hoof wrestling skills first mentioned way back during Trixie's party are what keep him alive against Rancor. Fluttercruel's ultimate technique is the same as her mother's: The Stare.
  • Odyne!Cruelty uses a version of Strife's Devil Blades Serpents attack called Strife Tribute: Hell's Gate Hydra.
  • During Rainbow's True Harmonizing, she laments that you can't be loyal to everyone due to conflicting loyalties and if someone else could have done better in Discord's trap, why is she Loyalty? During the Cosmic Retcon after Rumors, Celestia tells her it's because she doesn't blindly follow authority and is loyal to those who deserve it that she made Loyalty her own.
  • One of the Rumors Spawn are Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy's versions of Harry the Bear.
  • In Pinkie's reharmonization, she get hit with a pie pan in the face to knock her out when laying in bed when she'd been sleepless for weeks. In Dark World, RD is knocked out with the exact same pan after Discord rings bell miles away when the ponies storm the castle.
• The Cavalry: The changeling army and Night Guard arrive at the World Tower and fight off the monsters to help the CMC get through.
• The Cameo: Lady Babylon, the Big Bad of Godzillawolf's tumblr Blog has made a few cameos. Godzillawolf returns the favor by occasionally having Havoc and Entropy cameo in his works, as the two are friends.
  • Death by Cameo: Both cameos involve Lady Babylon dying in some fashion, the first by being impaled by an alternate Trixie and the second being an Avatar of hers having been erased by the Blank Wolf when she tried to send it there. Godzillawolf has no problem with either and has even said the latter is canon to his blog.
  • During Chapter 11 of the Finale arc, the therapist the angels bring in to help Fluttershy (well, an alternate one) with her problems seems to be Dr. Wolf. He's not mentioned by name, but the description seems pretty clear.
• Canon Immigrant:
  • Half-Light Midnight originated from Pinkie Pie's Fourth-Wall Variety Show before eventually being incorporated into the story proper.
  • The same with Alicorn!Apple Bloom from the same fic. Notably, it's the same Apple Bloom.
• Canon Welding:
  • The fic does this with the My Little Pony 'n Friends, My Little Pony Tales, and My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic continuities. The G1 Series took place thousands of years ago and the G1 Cast became The Ageless due to the Rainbow of Light. The Tales Series took place over a thousand years after that and the Anthropomorphic Shift was the result of the ponies taking cues from Megan's civilization (Megan actually left because she was afraid she was influencing them too much) and magic and the existence of the other tribes has faded into myth until Patch rediscovered them. Unfortunately, the world suffered a Class 2 Apocalypse, which resulted in the tribal history depicted in "Hearth's Warming Eve" and eventually the G4 universe. My Little Pony (G3) also happened, but it was erased by a Cosmic Retcon due to becoming unstable thanks to the wish spell that created that world. Pinkie Pie actually is G3 Pinkie Pie.
  • Story of the Blanks and several other fan works are also incorporated as Noodle Incidents or Alternate Universes.
  • And then in Dark World 29, we find out that through the actions of Nightmare Paradox, every recursive fanfic of Dark World is technically canon as a part of the "Groundhog Day" Loop she created.
• Can't Hold Her Liquor: Fluttercruel realizes this rather quickly about Fluttershy when drinking saltwater at a bar. Since they're Sharing a Body this extends to her as well.
• Cast Herd: Besides the obvious pun, this is inevitable with the story being split across different timelines and time periods.
• Caught in the Ripple: Invoked and subverted: the Nightmare Ponyville Arc appears to be Rainbow Dash having this happen in the reality rewrite. It turns out it's a Stealth Prequel, as she's actually Eclipse's Nightmare Manacle trapped in an Lotus-Eater Machine.
• Cerebus Retcon:
  • According to a Loose Canon story, the reason Pinkie has Medium Awareness is because she's the same Pinkie from G3. Why? To prevent the universe from collapsing from the spell that created it breaking down, some Alicorns and Draconequi (think Discord, only a Good Is Not Nice) essentially rewrote reality into G4, and Pinkie was the only leftover (although her brain was rewritten to fit the change) because StarSong sacrificed herself so she was erased instead of Pinkie! Harsh...
  • Remember the Parasprites? They're what Discord turned at least some of the Flutterponies into!
  • Twilight is actually a fusion of the G1 Twilight Sparkle and Pinkie's best friend Minty, and is that way because Minty died right in front of Pinkie and had her spirit transferred into the G1 Twilight by Pinkie.
  • Mild example: Turns out, Celestia secretly sent backup, in the form of a Black Ops SAS team, to shadow Twilight and her friends in case they couldn't defeat Nightmare Moon.
• Chainsaw Good: The cyborg Diamond Dog that Shining Armor is fighting produced one.
  Shining Armor: Oh CELESTIA! IT HAS A CHAINSAW!
  Pegasus Interviewer: What?!
  Shining Armor: It started cutting through my riot shield with a bucking CHAINSAW that popped out of its back! Who equips a cyborg diamond dog with a chainsaw?!
• Chaos Is Evil:
  • Subverted for the most part. While Discord, the Anthropomorphic Personification of Chaos, is evil, he's not inherently evil, and did not start out that way. The rest of his family, despite embodying Natures Fury and being chaotic, are actually important parts of keeping the universe running smoothly and all have at least some concern for life. Any threat they pose is simply them doing their jobs. Discord is the exception, as he decided It's All About Me and decided to take over Equestria and turn it into his own personal playground.
  • Also subverted with the Elements of Chaos. Despite Discord brainwashing the Dark World Mane Six to use them to act as his Co-Dragons, using them in such a way is their incomplete state. Their completed state comes from realizing both sides of the Element (good and bad), and once they do so, the Mane Six perform a Heel–Face Turn and become Phlebotinum Rebels.
• Character Rerailment: A chapter uses this as its title, naturally. It concerns Silver Spoon being forced by Nightmare Diamond Tiara to experience / act out her actions from the original version of "One Bad Seed."
• Chekhov's Armory: Oh, so much this. The sheer number of seemingly insignificant characters, events, or even small bits of dialogue that end up becoming extremely important later could fill a page all on its own.
• Chekhov's Gun:
  • Applebloom's adventure in Sunny Town was first mentioned in Applejack's Reharmonizing as one of the things Applejack saw in the Truth. During the Princess Gaia Arc, the citizens of Sunny Town appear in Princess Gaia's castle as her servants.
  • We find out in "Black Pearl" that Celestia has an alias called Sunny Day. She shows up in this alas in "Playtime" to distract the foals heading to Princess Gaia's castle.
  • Earlier in Dark World, Twilight (in response to one of the Valeyard's attacks) immunized the group to near every poison she was able to. Odyne!Fluttercruel is composed of mostly poisonous animals, and this immunity serves as an advantage during their fight with her.
  • The Crusaders accidentally summoning a Fire Elemental once. During the Wedding, Applebloom does it intentionally to ssummon one to distract the Changelings and cover their escape after saving Spike. They somehow summoned a Water Elemental, but still.
  • The Elder Horn was originally used by Nightmare Whisper as a power up before being taken by Luna after the Bearers beat Whisper. It's later used by the Gifted Unicorns to help power the Anti-Chaos Rune to weaken Discord and Nightmare Diamond.
• Chekhov's Gunpony:
  • Pinkamenia and Trixie's Imaginary Friends return to snap them out of Princess Gaia's spell.
  • Ruby, who is mentioned repeatedly when it comes to Sunny Town. During "Playtime", a mysterous song snaps Applejack out of it so she can see through Princess Gaia's illusion. It's later hinted by Applejack to have been Ruby.
  • The Interviewers, who seemed to just be a narrative device in the beginning, have gradually grown more and more important to the story, to the point of dropping hints to the characters to lead them in the right direction and giving Twilight Sparkle Razzaroo's Apocalyptic Log, something that isn't supposed to even exist in this timeline.
  • Tom's last shard saves Dark World! Rarity from being killed by Fluttercruel.
  • Lemon Hearts was mentioned several times in the SA arc, along with an 'Angry Mother Lemon'. We finally see her during the Wedding Arc...by chasing a couple Changelings down a hallway with said Angry Mother Lemon yelling "HOW'S THAT FOR AN ANGRY MOTHER LEMON?!"
  • In general, this happening is extremely frequent. There's a reason that one of the big themes of the series is 'there are no background ponies'.
• Chekhov's Skill:
  • Twilight and Trixie's Power Copying ability has been this multiple times.
  • Earlier in Bright Eyes' Nightmare section, it's established Lancer trained Bright Eyes to use a sword as bonding and continues to do so to help her survive in the post apocalyptic world. This ultimately enables her to defeat Cruel Eyes/D___t's Shadow of Existence in a sword fight at the end.
• Child by Rape:
  • Given how disturbingly close to actual rape that Discord's Mind Rape is described, Fluttercruel counts, as she was born from Discord's Mind Rape of Fluttershy. As if Discord doing this to Fluttershy wasn't horrible enough without this mentle image.
  • Whats worse — this is confirmed as what actually happened, for all intents, literally, as of Chapter 93: Love Hate Bedlam.
• Chores Without Powers: Sparkler is a unicorn, while her mother Derpy is a pegasus. One time, when Sparkler was a filly, Derpy took her along on her mail-carrying job to show her how hard it was, and had her carry filly-sized mailbags. When Sparkler complained that it was easier for Derpy since she could fly, Derpy came down and walked the rest of the route with her on hoof.
  Sparkler: ...Momma...why did you walk all the way?
  Derpy: Because, muffin, you were bright, it wasn't right for me blue fly while you bad to walk. I'd never take my muffin do something I wouldn't do myself.
• Climbing Climax: The Rumors Arc ends with the CMC climbing the World tower to stop Nightmare Diamond's last revision.
• Clone Angst: Alright, so she's not a "clone" per se, but Fluttercruel sees herself as just a knockoff of the real Fluttershy, not truly alive and completely unable to be a unique individual simply because of how she was created. This causes her a great deal of heartache because she really wants to be. Subverted after she realizes that she's real, regardless of whether or not she's a copy. When as part of their 'punishment', Luna brings up the possibility that Fluttercruel is a severely Mind Raped Fluttershy and "Fluttershy" is the copy, they don't care, they're both real, why should it matter which one of them is the "original"?
• Clones Are People, Too:
  • Despite being a twisted copy of Fluttershy, Fluttershy believes Fluttercruel has a right to be her own pony and how she was "born" doesn't matter. Fluttershy has a talk along these lines with Fluttercruel after Fluttercruel nearly performs a Heroic Sacrifice to defeat Nightmare Whisper, pointing out that, even though she's a copy, Fluttercruel managed to earn a unique Cutie Mark. Celestia then proceeds to give Fluttercruel the ability to switch places with Fluttershy at will so she can live her own life. "Trixie's Last Hurdle" reveals that they even threw her a Cute-ceañera to celebrate earning her Cutie Mark.
  • Ultimately decided to be the case with the Pinkie Pie clones Discord saved from the Heart world and brought to the final battle. The heroes go out of their way to talk them down and spare them because of this trope.
• Cloudcuckoolander:
  • Pinkie Pie, as to be expected. Even after her Split-Personality Merge, but she's able to think a lot more clearly.
  • Screwball is an even bigger one than Pinkie, though she actually is crazy. Subverted when she's restored to sanity by Discord.
• Cold-Blooded Torture:
  • Nightmare Whisper's entire existence. Not only is she strapped with all manner of torture devices and in agonizing pain, she's enduring the suffering of all of Equestria the whole time. All of this is pretty much self inflicted.
  • After the battle with Nightmare Whisper, Fluttershy still holds onto the suffering, not wanting to release it back into the world (and she also feels she deserves it as punishment for her actions). Later Pinkie Pie helps Fluttershy bear it to ease her suffering.
  • Chrysalis enjoys doing a mental version to her brainwashed slaves. Poor Applejack was tortured for three days before finally being freed.
• Coloring in the World: A small-scale example occurs in the Dark World arc. After Rainbow Dash is purified of her Discording, she falls into a healing coma and her mind goes to a Happy Place where she becomes a filly again and plays with her childhood friends. On the surface of the mental playground is a giant line drawing of herself which she fills in with colorful chalk. When she finishes coloring the whole thing, that is symbolic of her being ready to wake up and go help her friends save the world.
• Combined Energy Attack:
  • Nightmare Eclipse is defeated when the power of the G1, G2, G3, G4 (Pre-Discord), and Dark World Mane Casts' and the Princesses' Elements of Harmony are combined into one final strike.
  • Paxphobia is destroyed in the Final Battle by Luna diving into the Truth and allowing literally everyone in the entire series to channel their potential Elements of Harmony and send them to the Mane Six, who use it to plow straight through Paxphobia and finish him off once and for all.
• Complete Immortality:
  • The Dark World!Mane Six have a form of this. The don't age and can regenerate from anything so long as the Element isn't destroyed. The only way to kill them is by destroying or removing their Element of Chaos, though they can still be hurt and their immortality doesn't prevent exhaustion or being knocked unconscious. Most of their major enemies are also immortal in a similar sense, preventing it from being a Story-Breaker Power.
  • The Dazzlings/Sirens also have this, possibly due to having artificial Elements of Chaos containing part of their souls. Like with the Dark World!Mane Six, they can be blown to ashes and not die. This is part of why they had to be banished to another dimension to defeat them.
  • All the gods have this, as killing them is insanely difficult even in physical form, and all that does is return them to the spirit realm. Actually killing one off is possible, insanely hard, and not recommended, as it also destroys their entire Concept, backwards and forwards, and erases everyone and everything existing because of it.
  • Lord Tirek gained this due to his mutation into his current form. Not only is he immortal, he can regenerate from what should be fatal wounds.
• Composite Character:
  • According to Loose Canon, Rainbow Dash is literally a fusion of Firefly and the G3 Rainbow Dash.
  • Likewise, Twilight Sparkle is a literal fusion of G1 Twilight and G3 Minty.
  • The G3 ponies who were recycled into G4 versions of themselves usually resulted in this, except for the cases who got regular reincarnation instead.
  • Lord Tirek is a combination of his G1 self and his G4 self, in powers and backstories.
• Condescending Compassion: Trixie receives this from a dream version of Twilight brought on by what seems to be the embodiment of the Alicorn Amulet. She also later receives it from the real Twilight due to Chrysalis' brainwashing.
• Conditioned to Be Weak: In the Dark World arc, Discord places a spell on Spike, now an adult dragon, to keep his natural greed and hoarding instinct in check and make him more controllable. He then decides to remove it right as Twilight and Applejack are trying to snap Rarigreed out of her brainwashing. This makes Spike desire everything for himself, including Rarigreed who he has always been in love with, and become incredibly violent toward any pony who tries to stop him.
• Confusion Fu: Very common, with Discord (naturally), Pinkie Pie, and Dark World!Applejack being prime users due to their power sets. Part of what makes Dark World!Derpy an effective combatant is she has an unpredictable flight pattern. Dark World!Twilight gradually learns to make good use of this and even suggests it as the best method of fighting Discord because he's not expecting chaos to be used against him. It'd actually be a shorter list to name characters who don't use this at some point.
• Conspiracy Theorist: Onyx Tiara believes that door handles and tooth brushes are tools of the unicorns and their gryphon co-conspirators to keep hard working Earth Ponies at a disadvantage. He's also convinced that Celestia's good nature is a "mask that hides the Tyrant beneath" that every negative event in Equestria's history can be traced back to her. That, or its a unicorn/pegasus plot.
• Continuity Cavalcade:
  • The series loves this trope whenever possible. Gilda's explanation of where she's been since we last saw her is a parallel to the storyline of the series as a whole, counting as a minor one.
  • The later arcs are basically this for not only the fic itself, but the entire MLP franchise.
• Continuity Nod: It's mentioned in the Shining Armor Arc that Zebra, Deer, and Minotaurs can see visions of other worlds and access knowledge they otherwise couldn't in locations where nine leylines converge and that one of the locations where this happens is in the Everfree Forest. This is later mentioned in Bright Eyes' Gaiden Story as a possible reason for Zecora having dreams about her past lives Kimono and Ms. Hackney.
• Continuity Snarl:
  • As a result of her Medium Awareness, Pinkie attempts to avert this in-universe, but ultimately fails and nearly drives herself insane.
  • The Wish Spell that created G3 breaking down resulted in this, which threatened to destroy the timeline, thus why it had to be erased.
  • Makarov's Reality Warper powers cause plenty of these, much to the Interviewer's dismay. Pandora invoking this trope to weaken him is part of her help to Shining Armor to stop him.
• Conveniently Interrupted Document: Inverted for the diary of G1 Applejack. While writing down her memoirs she also wrote her experience as one of Tirek's chariot mounts during the invasion of Dream Valley, only that page survived the passage of time and was taken out of context. When G4 Applejack found it and discovered the supposed 'dark secret' the Apple family tried to bury about their founder, her quest for the truth started the events of the Tirek Gaiden.
• Cooldown Hug: Used by Pinkie Pie to calm down Rainbow Dash when she slips so far back into her self loathing she loses it.
• Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: According to Moth, a Changeling's magic color is dependent on who they've pledged loyalty to. This was shown earlier with the Changelings having a different magic color under Cocoon than Chrysalis. This is later shown to be the case with Weaver, Diver, and Bombardier, who's magic matches Celestia.
• Cosmic Horror Story:
  • The Shining Armor Arc has aspects of this due to the nature of the antagonists and psychological horror. However, it's more Lovecraft Lite.
  • Queen Chrysalis' origin story is a straighter example, to the point some readers have even called it 'Lovecraftian'.
  • Alexwarlorn seems to have a knack for turning villains' origins into these. A one shot chapter explaining how the Crystal Empire fits into this universe has this with King Sombra's origins. He's not actually a unicorn, but a Equinoid Abomination Discord got one of his cousins (which seem to include several Lovecraftian deities) to trick the crystal ponies into siphoning off their negative emotions, primarily fear, which was fed into the ground deep underneath the Empire. This eventually created King Sombra, who emerged and conquered the Empire, making Sombra literally the suppressed fears of an entire kingdom given shape. In addition, there's even creepy chanting in an alien tongue while Discord's unnamed cousin awakens his creation.
  • Ironically, Ponythulhu's appearances are subversions. The big guy is actually very polite and pretty fun to hang out with.
  • Lord Tirek's origin. A meteor crashes to the planet, spreading a horrific, seemingly unstoppable plague that threatens to devour everything and the source of it is guarded by legions of horrific creatures. And it then gets much much worse when Tirek absorbs said source and becomes a god-like force of evil and slaughters his entire people with a seemingly infinite army of monsters. Notably for the Centaurs, this wasn't Lovecraft Lite.
  • The Rumors Arc sees a Lovecraftian horror and his allies Rewriting Reality into a horrific mess. Thankfully, it's ultimately undone.
• Cosmic Retcon:
  • The Alicorns and Draconequi were originally in charge of this according to very Loose Canon, but only if a universe was on the verge of entropy and needed a drastic overhaul if there was any hope of saving it. They retconed the G3 universe into the G4 universe because it was on the verge of dying if they didn't.
  • More like destroying the G3 universe and rebuilding it completely as G4 Equestria. The Draconequi function similar to Shiva the Destroyer, demolishing the aging universe to clear space for its recreation. Discord apparently liked his job too much and started destroying for the sake of destruction. Anarchy implies the Alicorn's job is the "recreation" side of the coin.
  • The Blank Wolf destroying Makarov and the Master causes these as well, but it's stated in its case it's repairing the damage rather than erasing the timeline.
  • In the process of fixing the damage done by the Rumors, Applebloom performs one of these, including nudging past events in a better direction. Havoc in an earlier chapter makes it clear doing this was to a degree a reward for her and the other Crusaders saving the universe.
• Crapsack World:
  • The Epilogue timeline, oh so much. That said, it's still got enough to be worth saving, which they ultimately succeed in doing.
  • The world created by the Rumors. Imagine every grimdark fanfiction happening at once. Thankfully its undone.
• Crossover: The original My Little Pony TV Specials, My Little Pony 'n Friends, My Little Pony Tales, and My Little Pony (G3) all play some role in the story. Due to the Rainbow making Paradise Estate Ponies immortal until they left willingly, the Paradise Estate group who fought Discord during his first reign was composed of characters from the first three. Pinkie Pie is LITERALLY G3 Pinkie, and G1 Applejack was the Bearer of the Element of Laughter when Applejack called for aid from her alternate selves. However, so far there hasn't been a total team up between all the groups, so it isn't a Crisis Crossover just yet.
• Create Your Own Villain:
  • Back when she was still in her A God Am I phase (before mellowing out a lot), Luna gave Tirek the Rainbow of Darkness so he could try and prove his love to her. During her and Celestia's reign, Tirek returned to life and ended up having a battle with her for dominion over the night.
  • Celestia didn't make Discord a monster, but she taught him how to plan and ultimately accidentally helped him discover he was a sadist. She also left him to be punished by his family for helping her bring the Windigos to Equestria, causing him to keep a grudge against her.
  • Dark World!Discord ended up creating Nightmare Eclipse/Paradox. She was originally Twilight Sparkle until he turned her into Twilight Tragedy and put her through a living hell for a thousand years. When she finally broke free, she snapped and decided to invoke Nightmarification to become Nightmare Purgatory and brutally kill him in revenge. By that point, she's been so consumed by her thirst for vengeance that she turns her plan to Set Right What Once Went Wrong into a "Groundhog Day" Loop Ironic Hell for Discord, becoming the Omnicidal Maniac she is now.
• Creating Life Is Awesome:
  • Celestia and Luna, and in fact all Alicorns, are capable of creating life (being the Creation side of the Fantasy Pantheon), and treat doing so this way. Celestia causally mentions her Mother being So Proud of You for creating her first species and created the Phoenixes as a gift to her brother.
  • Lemon Hearts is proud of her ability to create Familiars and loves her creations. In Dark World, this eventually results in an entire race of lemon ponies being a thing.
• Crisis Crossover:
  • The G1, G2, G3, and G4 (pre-Reign of Chaos) Mane Casts are all brought to the present by Twilight the Unicorn during the Final Battle of Dark World, each using a set of Elements (along with the present mane cast and the Princesses) to defeat Nightmare Eclipse once and for all.
  • Implied to be what it took for the entity that would become Makarov to be defeated for the first time in the Realm of Legends where it took the form of an Alicorn Princess. While the actual battle is unseen, she's shown to have taken an army of fictional characters including Paul Bunyan and Daring Do to defeat and restrain her so Pandora could remove it's stolen Lights and seal it away.
• Crouching Moron, Hidden Badass:
  • Ditzy Doo might not be the smartest pony (and went the wrong way to retrieve birds twice in a row at the Winter Wrap-Up), but mess with her daughter and you're in for a serious flank kicking!
  • Pinkie Pie might be a Cloudcuckoolander, but she can be very tough when he needs.
• Cruel and Unusual Death:
  • After kicking one of his teeth out, Discord becomes so enraged at Mimic that he lacerates her with the tooth before finally slamming her into paste.
  • Literally every single death in the Transitions arc.
• Cry for the Devil:
  • "Everkind Forest" makes the zombie ponies from Story of the Blanks seem downright tragic. The Princess Gaia brainwashed them to forget their actions, but whenever they look into Applejack's eyes, they remember. Their reaction is just heartbreaking.
  • Origins manages to invoke this for freakin' Discord! In the the later chapters, it's revealed that, in order to reach Equestria, he incarnated himself as a mortal draconequus born to G1 pony Shady; she raised him like a mother and it was heavily implied that, growing up, he wasn't anything worse than mischievous and actually got along well with Celestia and Luna when they did the same. More to the point, when his spirit starts to awaken, he is utterly terrified of it and actively resists it happening for a time. It's made all the worse because we, as readers, know he's going to fail.
  • To some degree invoked with Chrysalis, as her inability to actually become a better person even for her loved ones causes herself and her loved ones misery and is treated tragically.
• Cuckoo Nest: Loneliness tries to convince Twilight the time from her picking up Trixie to the present where hallucinations and she killed Trixie in her insanity. Twilight realizes its fake due to the 'psychiatrist' not operating like a real one would.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • Fluttershy dishes one out to Fluttercruel, in her own way.
  • Angry Pie does this to Pinkamenia's imaginary friends in her pursuit of the other parts of Pinkie Pie's personality. Then gets one of her own when Pinkie Pie merges with Pinkamenia to transform into Surprise.
  • The Dragon-Hooviet War turned into one of these at the end, when Queen Tiamat got involved. She laid waste to half the empire, and stopped just short of completely destroying their capital.
  • Shining Armor's first fight with General-Admiral Makarov. Shining gets one hit, the rest of the fight consists of Makarov delivering a No-Holds-Barred Beatdown to Shining. Makarov probably would've beat him to death if Thunderchild hadn't performed a Big Damn Heroes moment to save his flank.
  • There's also the Dark World!Mane Cast vs. Discord's army of Mooks. It's so one sided Rarity and Applejack manage to have Casual Danger Dialogue while kicking flank. Special note goes to the Shadow-Beast-Of-The-Third-Unresolved (which was probably the most normal thing there) and the giant-cyborg-spider-vampire neither of which even get to attack before getting taken out by Pinkie Pie pulling an Offhand Backhand with her party cannon and Apple Pie using a Logic Bomb respectively.
  • Shortly before that, we have Proto-Nightmare Twilight vs Angry Pie. The battle is extremely one sided and by the end, Twilight, after being brought back to her senses, is left wondering how many times over she would've killed Angry Pie if she weren't immortal and Angry is left near catatonic.
  • In Melody's '7 Dreams/Nightmares' chapter Rancor, while visiting the past, gets out of hand and Mortis, who's watching her at the time, has to step in. He easily disables her by paralyzing her with acupuncture in a couple seconds.
    • In the second half, Melody's daughter, Sweet Music, steps up to defend a unicorn named Spell Circle from three colts who are bullying him. Despite being a blank flank filly, she beats the crap out of all three and sends them running home with a warning that if she catches them doing it again, she'll tell everypony in town they got beat up by a girl.
  • The Dark World!Mane Six's first encounter with Paradox's Psycho Rangers ends with everyone but Twilight disabled in one hit each and ends the chapter on a cliffhanger.
  • One happens in the backstory of the series. A mortal pegasus uses the Concept Killing Spear to permanently kill the son of Celestia's sister, the Love Goddess Venus. Venus descends to the mortal plain in an Unstoppable Rage and confronts said Pegasus, who prepares to try and kill her with it. Venus blows a heart-shaped hole through her chest before she can even attack.
  • The Redeemed Six versus Nightmare Paradox in a previous timeline. The Redeemed Six barely even got a single hit in before literally being torn apart.
  • The G1, G2, G3, G4, and Dark World Mane Casts and the Princesses vs the Psycho Rangers. While they try to fight back, the Nightmares are no match for six sets of Elements and are easily washed away.
  • Back in "Origins" there's Discord vs Galaxia. Galaxia hits him with everything she has, but Discord No Sells it with no effort and proceeds to slice her wings and legs off, drive his claw through her throat, and atomize her with Destruction's power. Discord doesn't even break a sweat and actually takes time to sing his version of 'You're Only Second Rate' throughout the fight just to toy with her.
  • Makarov does this to Natasha and Thunderchild in 15, simply dodging the former's sniper round and redirecting the latter's lightning bolt at her, before blowing up his thundercloud with a BFG (though both survive). This prompts Cadence to power up using the bonds of Misfit Actual and the Rebels and return the favor.
  • The Wolf vs Makarov/The Shadow Of Chernobull. Makarov makes it flinch once and the Death Dome slows it down briefly...that's it. The rest of the 'fight' is the Wolf ripping him to shreds and his blows failing to even hurt it.
    • The Blank Wolf verses anything is normally one of these. We see it have to deal with another Parody Sue, Incubators, and it's implied to have dealed with other beings. None of them last more than a couple minutes against it. Shining only survives his encounters via quick thinking and running for his life. The only reason it loses in the end is Cadence Taking the Bullet for Shining results in it being stripped of its immortality, and even then it doesn't go down without a big fight.
  • During the Final Battle of the Age of Myths, several witches attempted to hold off the Moochick so Hydia could aid in unleashing Lilith. The Moochick easily beat them, destroyed their wands, and banished them to a tropical island paradise.
  • The CMC and Button vs the corrupted Big Mac (who's currently been turned into himself from Sweet Apple Massacre). While offscreen, the Rumors they've been through already were so much worse and so much more deadly Big Mac didn't stand a chance. Apparently a demonic entitiy called 'He Who Walks Behind the Trees' showed up as well, but they doused him with Holy Water then lit him on fire using cider.
  • All four Elders vs Nythy's Evil Knockoff copies of Bayonetta, Asura, Kratos, and Demi-Fiend to let the CMC move on. To note, all four were using mortal avatars at the time and the God-Killers still don't get one clean hit in.
  • Any fight that Queen Majesty and Lord Tirek (post transformation) end up in tends to be one sided in their favor, though some enemies fair better than others. This, naturally, stops when they face one another.
• Cursed with Awesome:
  • Fluttershy Sharing a Body with Fluttercruel isn't nearly as bad as it sounds. Fluttershy quickly catches on to how useful having a second, more assertive person to help her out in difficult spots can be. This also comes in handy during the Wedding Arc, as Fluttershy is good at dodging and defense while Fluttercruel is good at offense.
  • Several ponies gain superpowers from the Rumors, such as Redheart gaining Healing Hands and Button gaining video game Personality Powers. Redheart keeps hers and it becomes this in a different way: Sweet Heart obtained it by being mutated by the disaster that destroyed her civilization and passed it down her family line.
• Cut Away Gag:
  • During the battle between Dark World!Spike and Rancor, Rancor says that Spike would make a good Champion for her. Spike asks who'd want to be her champion and it cuts to a pony version of Lobo fighting Superstallion in a city, implying Lobo is one of Rancor's Champions.
  • Later, Dark World!Discord asks Pinkie to marry him. Pinkie turns him down, saying it'd take a zillion years for her to reform him. The scene cuts to an Alternate Universe a zillion and one years later where Discord gives up evil and kisses his wife.
• Cuteness Proximity: Pinkie Pie can't resist Filly Zecora's cuteness. While the others don't gush like she does, they do find her extremely cute.
• Cut Song: Rarity had a song written for her by one of the Beta Readers to be used in "Pearl Necklace", but the author ultimately couldn't fit it in and included it as a What If? scene. It's a reprise of "Art Of The Dress" covering her relationship with Diamond Tiara that would be used to get through to Pinkie.

D

• Daddy's Little Villain: Epilogue!Fluttercruel is this to Discord; she's the loyalist of the discorded Mane Six, and he in turn refers to her as his "little princess" and actually cares about her, to the point of ordering her to retreat from a fight with Queen Cadence because the latter is powerful enough to actually harm her.
• Darker and Edgier
  • Lighter and Softer: The second half, compared to the first.
    • Until Loneliness shows up and Discord returns.
  • Tirek's Origins Episode, what with featuring Tirek's genocide of his own people in all it's horror.
• Darkest Hour:
  • The chapter title of one of the chapters of the Dark World Arc. And indeed it is.
  • The Rumors Arc begins with this as the villains manage to activate their endgame and rewrite reality into a grimdark nightmare, with only the Crusaders potentially able to stop it.
• Dark Is Not Evil:
  • Fluttershy quickly realizes that just because Fluttercruel was made by Discord doesn't mean she's evil like him. She's right.
  • "Applejack's Dream" implies that Liarjack becomes an Element Of Kindness in the Bad Future. We finally see this come to pass in Dark World.
  • Maasailand is Dark Is Not Evil: The Country. The red and black color-scheme and scorpion motif? In their culture they're symbols of love and peace and the Brotherhood of the Scorpion are actually pacifists. Even their Manticores are cute, docile, and vegetarians. It just happens that symbols of evil in most cultures happen to be symbols of good and peace in theirs.
  • Happens to Nightmare Eclipse's former Co-Dragons due to what happened. They were astral projecting through Eclipse when they were hit by six sets of Elements of Harmony, so their souls were purified but not their bodies (that's Rainbow's theory anyway). So when their memories are restored, they're trying to help free the ponies in the fake Ponyville as Nightmares, which naturally leads to some ponies being afraid of them, and Bright Night having to reassure Cheerilee the big scary Nightmares aren't the bad guys.
  • Notably, two entire species were born from curses. The Changelings were born from the Hearts and Hooves Day myth while the Diamond Dogs were born from cursed ponies who fell victim to the ghost of the Jewel Wizard from G1. Neither species are depicted as inherently evil and good members of both races are shown.
  • Sweetie Belle learns dark magic, but is able to use it for good.
  • The Draconequi are this, as while they are Nature's Fury and darker than the Alicorns, they are Good Is Not Nice at worst, including Havoc and Entropy. Discord is the only genuinely evil one of the lot.
• The Dark Side Will Make You Forget:
  • Twilight Tragedy and Rarigreed had both forgotten the ones they once loved while being controlled by Discord in Dark World. Whether it was Discord's brainwashing or their own way to cope with it isn't known.
  • Nightmare Eclipse/Paradox originally reset the world to end Discord's reign of terror and suffering once and for all, but by the time she went Nightmare and tortured him to death, she'd decided he hadn't suffered enough and made his reign endless so his punishment would be. Even more ironic when she was originally hesitant to use time magic at all because she was afraid of making an even worse future, which is exactly what she did.
  • Also happened to her Co-Dragons. Manacle for example originally wanted to save her Twilight, but eventually became as murder crazy as Eclipse. She doesn't take it well when she remembers all this after becoming sane again.
    Rainbow Dash/Manacle: Please... stop... please... I... I lost track of myself... of what I wanted, of what I hoped for... I . . .
  • This seems to be the norm for any Nightmare, as their insanity often drives them to forget the reasons they've started or misunderstand them.
• Dark Reprise:
  • Fluttercruel gets one of Fluttershy's "So Many Wonders" song... Sort of. While it's not as sweet as Fluttershy's version, it's far from dark.
  • Fluttercruel tries to sing Fluttershy's lullaby in a desprate attempt to snap Fluttershy out of her Nightmare mode, but doesn't get the chance.
  • Princess Gaia's Villain Song is a true Dark Reprise of "So Many Wonders", this time being used as a siren's song to hypnotise Applejack. Instead of focusing on how wonderful the world outside is, it's focusing on happy they'll be by forgetting everything and coming to join her in her Lotus-Eater Machine forever.
    • Made even better when we discover she's lying to herself about what she is as much as everyone else.
  • The first chapter of the Dark World Arc begins with a Dark Reprise of the show's opening theme sung by Discord and the corrupted Mane Six.
  • The Dazzlings' song "Welcome to the Show" from canon is revealed In-Universe to have first been a song they sang back when they were just normal sea ponies and rock stars (and their sisters were still alive), making it one of these retroactively.
• Dawn of an Era:
  • The beginning Age of Myths is shown with the uplifting of Ponykind as a whole.
  • The Golden Age (Tales) has its dawn, but it's only mentioned as having been the work of the Princesses of Ponyland, the last one passing away of old age when it happened. The destruction of Hydia's family of evil Witches and Warlocks also allowed it, as with them all but extinct they could no longer cause trouble.
  • While it ultimately didn't last, the creation of the Age of Dreams (G3) via the Wish Spell of the Tales verse is also shown.
  • The dawn of the current age, the Age of Friendship (according to Word of God) was Discord's defeat by Celestia and Luna.
• Day in the Limelight: Recent chapters have focused on Zecora, Princess Celestia, Nurse Redheart, and Owlowiscious.
• De-aged in Death: In the Dark World timeline, Fluttercruel is Born as an Adult and is more than a thousand years old. When she dies, her spirit appears as a filly to reflect that she is and always has been a Psychopathic Manchild who was never mentally an adult and only looked like one, due to being Discorded and brainwashed her whole life.
• Deader than Dead:
  • Loneliness's death. She's described as exploding twice; the first explosion atomizing her and the second destroying whatever was left.
  • Which is Fridge Brilliance — why yes, Spike, you CAN explode twice! Pinkie would know.
  • D__t, Discord's elder brother, was erased by Entropy, something Havoc still holds against Her. His Shadow of Existence is later destroyed by Bright Eyes, destroying what was LEFT of him.
  • Makarov's fate, having been erased by the Blank Wolf.
  • Ditto for the Master, who Minuette later feeds to the same entity.
  • Queen Chrysalis' ultimate fate is a variation of this. While her soul still exists, her personality and memories are all destroyed, reducing her to an innocent infant. Word of God even said in the comments that she "no longer exists, not even as a spirit."
  • The same applies to Nightmare Eclipse. According to Word of God, she's in the same condition as Chrysalis: being absorbed by Twilight destroyed her persona, identity, and self. Given how many ponies Eclipse erased from existence this is a fitting fate.
  • Discord's Goatcord detachment is erased from existence by the Crusaders using the bit of Entropy's power she gifted them as capes. Entropy then destroys his shadow by splitting it into the parts of her and Havoc's essence Discord originally came from still within him and the two reabsorb it, ensuring he's pretty much as gone as it is possible to be gone.
• Deadly Distant Finale: 7 Dreams/Nightmares Gaiden, taking place several thousand years ago, shows the fates of each character, and thus counts as this to G3. Ironically, it's actually pretty happy all things considered.
• Deadly Gas:
  • Makarov has access to various types of it. He plots to gas every dragon on the planet with some, and he already performed genocide on the Changelings with it, including the innocent civilians who did nothing wrong...or rather that's justification he rewrites reality to say. In reality, he did something much worse.
  • A Mammoth Tank fires some gas rockets mixed in with explosive rounds, claiming the lives of a few Allied soldiers and the nearby Hooviet conscripts.
• Deadpan Snarker: The Equestrian Royal Guard suggests this as the appropriate response to certain circumstances;
  Shining Armor: ...the Royal Guard Regulations state in Rule Four Hundred and Nine, that 'in face of overwhelming stupidity, an officer is permitted to deploy sarcasm'(I appreciate the Princess' understanding of our position).
• Deal with the Devil:
  • Diamond Tiara made one with Discord to carry out a ritual in order to free him, in exchange he'll restore her mother's sanity. Ironically, he keeps his side of the deal, but by then has driven Diamond so insane she goes Nightmare and becomes The Dragon to him.
  • Luna plays herself in a theater performance where she makes these with three Earth Ponies. Though the way she does it is more of a Secret Test of Character, as the ones who were selfish were the ones who paid the price — they died and she took their souls — while the third went free and lived to old age. No, she didn't actually do that, she just wrote the play as one of her artistic pursuits. Also doubles as a Shout-Out to a similar deal The Tales of Beedle the Bard.
  • Celestia made one with Entropy, Discord's mother, to get the means to end hatred on Equus. The only thing she COULD give Entropy was the memory of an alicorn had to come crawling to her for help. Unfortunately, while Entropy didn't exactly trick her (Celestia simply didn't think things through), the reflections provided to carry out her desire ended up becoming the Windigos to accomplish Celestia's wish due to Celestia's faulty instructions. Worth noting is Entropy isn't evil, just dangerous.
• Death by Adaptation: Due to Spike never going on the events of Dragon Quest since Twilight can just tell him about his heroic ancestors, Peewee's nest is destroyed by Garble and his cronies. While the Interviewers save Peewee, they weren't supposed to, as there was no way they could guide someone else into doing it. This means Peewee technically died as far as reality is concerned, as what saved him technically doesn't exist. Ultimately they have to hand him over to Starlight Angel to be taken to the afterlife.
• Death Faked for You: While they thought Trixie had already left, the two Changelings who were sent to kill Trixie couldn't bring themselves to condemn a completely innocent pony to death (on top of an existing Heel Realization) and instead faked her death by killing a stray cat and giving the bloody knives to their superior.
• Death Glare: Fluttershy's Stare, as expected. She can also use it as Nightmare Whisper. Unfortunately for her, so can Fluttercruel.
• Decon-Recon Switch: While the fic deconstructs the simplicity and easy answers inherent in a children's show, the central themes of the series such as The Power of Friendship and the value of honesty, generosity, laughter, loyalty and kindness are constantly reaffirmed even after having seemingly been torn down.
• Deconstruction Fic:
  • Confirmed to be such by Word of God. It deconstructs things like Scootaloo's lack of any present family, Diamond Tiara being the Alpha Bitch, Pinkie Pie's mental state, the theory Fluttercruel is a Discord created Split Personality, and that not everything can be fixed up with one World-Healing Wave and psychological damage takes a long time to fix. However, the deconstruction doesn't lead to a Downer Ending, instead all these elements ultimately lead to everypony changing for the better.
  • It also deconstructs the "the three pony sub-races are now in harmony" aspect of the show's Hearth's Warming Eve play. The actions and attitudes of Onyx Tiara and Silver Spoon's mother show that many, many Earth Ponies are still very bitter over how the Unicorns and Pegasi once treated them.
    • Then reconstructs it by revealing its not as widespread as Onyx acts like it is and Silver Spoon's family were mainly humoring Onyx, and Onyx eventually realizes his racism nearly ruined his life. It's also ultimately erased from existence via Apple Bloom's Cosmic Retcon.
  • "Retcon-struction", ironically, deconstructs the events of Lesson Zero. Twilight has been mentally torturing herself out of guilt for the riot she caused and desperately tries to make up for it, even after everypony already forgave her. It takes getting called out by Silver Spoon and a heart to heart with Trixie before she finally lets go of her guilt.
  • Pretty much every chapter of the original Reharminozation series involves deconstructing the whole "and everything went back to normal" ending of Return of Harmony. Fluttershy is confronted with the fact that Fluttercruel is now an entirely new entity and resolves to raise her herself. Rainbow Dash is haunted by her decision to abandon her friends and is completely unable to understand why they just welcomed her back as a friend so quickly. The whole Tom incident has given Rarity a severe, crippling fear of all things related to gems, diamonds in particular. Applejack becomes obsessed with telling the truth. Pinkie becomes so obsessed with parties and happiness that she puts her mental and physical health at life-threatening risk. Trixie is so affected by Discord's Breaking Lecture that the World-Healing Wave had no affect on her at all, and even after everything was restored, she remained so catatonic that she literally couldn't survive on her own and needed to be cared for by her family like a paraplegic vegetable (Though this turns out to be mainly due to Loneliness possessing her). Twilight's Sanity Slippage in "Lesson Zero" is made into having been because of Discord's torture of her. However, being a Decon-Recon Switch fic, they all recover and turn out stronger for it.
• Defeat Equals Friendship:
  • After being browbeat into submission, Fluttercruel becomes a valuable ally for Fluttershy. Even when she takes control, she's not outright mean and cruel to Fluttershy, she just wants to actually enjoy life for a change.
  • This pays off during the battle with Nightmare Whisper, as Fluttercruel cares enough about Fluttershy to return from beyond to save her.
• Defiant to the End:
  • Despite the rather small amount of detail given, both times Mimic's Dying Moment of Awesome has been shown in Recursive Fanfiction, her final moments have been depicted in this fashion.
  • The Epilogue version of Cadence never stops resisting Discord's rule, even singing a song about how she won't stop fighting until her last breath and indeed she doesn't.
    • She's even defiant passed the end. Her spirit (or at least Twilight's mind choosing her image) returns five hundred years later to help Twilight finally break free of his control.
  • Subverted with the Dark World!Mane Six, who pretend they're doing this to keep Nightmare Eclipse and her Psycho Rangers busy long enough for Twilight to put their real plan into action.
  • Chrysalis remains true to her evil nature even as she lays dying, only faltering at all when Sweetie Belle is involved.
• Defrosting the Ice Queen:
  • To some degree, this applies to Trixie learning to accept the Mane Cast's friendship.
  • The Cutie Mark Crusaders attempt to do this with Silver Spoon. Thanks in part to the Princess Gaia incident, they succeed.
• Defusing the Tyke-Bomb: This is what Fluttershy does, teaching Fluttercruel that she is so much more than a cruel parody of Fluttershy.
• Despair Event Horizon:
  • Twilight after her memory spell backfires on Nightmare Whisper, forcing her to experience all the suffering and pain Nightmare Whisper had absorbed. Trixie pulls her back with the memory spell. It then turns out that Nightmare Whisper can fire a beam of pure suffering from her mouth to make anyone it hits experience this, which she uses on Rainbow Dash. Thankfully, the memory spell works again that time.
  • Driving Diamond past this so she'll go Nightmare was part of Discord's Evil Plan with her.
• Determinator:
  • The entire mane cast during the Final Battle with Nightmare Whisper. Absolutely nothing will stop them from saving Fluttershy. Trixie gets electrocuted and has a rib broken, Applejack gets glass daggers lodged in her back, Pinkie Pie gets cut up being thrown through a stained glass window, and Rainbow and Twilight both end up getting Mind Raped, but refuse to quit. But Rarity takes the cake by using telekinesis to keep moving after having her legs broken!.
  • Also,Diamond Tiara resists Princess Gaia's song through willpower and Self-Deprecation, though it's encouraged by Discord shouting into her mind.
    Discord: "IGNORE IT! ONLY BAD LITTLE FILLIES WHO DON'T CARE THAT THEIR MOTHER STAYS SICK FOREVER LISTEN TO THAT SONG! IGNORE IT! YOU ARE NOT TO THINK ABOUT IT OR PAY ANY ATTENTION TO IT AT ALL!!!"
  • Silver Spoon will find and save Diamond Tiara. Not even being Mind Raped by her Nightmare can stop her.
• Did We Just Have Tea with Cthulhu?:
  • Ponythulhu is surprisingly polite and friendly for an Eldritch Abomination, to the point Dark World!Twilight makes a note to be friendly to send him a friendly note after throwing the blackbirds that spent the last 1000 years torturing Derpy into his realm, providing him with a recipe for them.
  • Shining Armor once set in to a diplomatic meeting between Celestia and Queen Tiamat. He comments how surreal it was to witness the sun goddess having a polite conversation over tea with a five-headed dragon so massive her tea cups are bigger than most buildings.
  • In "Setting the Record Straight", Twilight, Luna, and Celestia are visited in their dreams by Havoc...so he can explain his family's side of things, make amends with Celestia and Luna, explain to Twilight where the soapboxes come from, and finally just spends the rest of the dream having a tea party with them. Twilight lampshades how weird of a situation this was.
• Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?:
  • The mane six's previous defeats of Nightmare Moon and Discord, of course, but they add two to the count with the defeat of Nightmare Whisper and Applejack teaming up with five alternate versions of herself to defeat Nightmare Mirror.
  • There's also G1 Mimic managing to bust out Discord's tooth permanently and perform a successful You Shall Not Pass!. She may have died, but she still managed to wound him in such a way no one has been able to do before or since.
  • Pinkie and Minty managed to defeat Princess Luna with a musical number during the Cosmic Retcon of G3. Even though Strife had weakened her, that's still a great accomplishment.
  • Cadance managing to defeat Havoc's Avatar. It may not have been NEARLY as strong as the real thing, but that's still impressive.
  • The Paradise Estate Ponies, even taking into account they had three Alicorns supporting them (all three were considerably weaker than him), managed to defeat Discord in a straight up fight with the Rainbow Of Light. Unfortunately, Galaxia decided to shatter him, allowing him to Body Surf into a new body.
  • Dark World!Spike manages to get the upperhand on Rancor, the Draconequus of Violence, Passions, and Anger, and force her into retreat temporarily. She is a young Draconequus, but still.
  • There's also an Alternate Universe Rainbow Dash being shown killing Pinkie's Nightmare, Nightmare Granfalloon.
  • The Dark World Mane Six managing to defeat Odyne!Cruelty, first destroying her body (unfortunately killing Sparkler in the process), then by blasting her soul with the Elements, banishing her from mortal reality.
  • One that occurs offscreen was a mortal Pegasus, armed with the Concept Killing Spear, managed to kill the demigod Cupid, permanently due to having a personal hatred of love. Unfortunately for said Pegasus, said demigod was the son of Venus, who descended to the mortal plain in an Unstoppable Rage...
  • Bright Eyes manages to defeat Discord's older brother D___t in a sword fight and kill him Deader than Dead. True, it was simply his Shadow of Existence, but its still no small feat and is implied to have possibly saved existence from an insane Concept coming back into existence.
  • The Dark World, G1, G2, G3, and G4 (pre-Discord version) Mane Casts, Princessess, and Minty Pie finally managing to defeat Nightmare Eclipse and her Psycho Rangers. Not only do they defeat her, due to her merging with every Nightmare Purgatory the moment of their birth, they defeated every Nightmare Eclipse to ever exist.
  • Queen Chrysalis managed to somehow brainwash Half-Light Dusk/the Unicorn Interviewer, who is one of Amicitia's children and Spirit of Happy Conclusions.
  • The G1 Mane Cast did it again by defeating Lilith, the First Witch and a being composed of pure evil magic that could have destroyed the entire world, by Magic Star sealing her magic in the newly forged Alicorn Amulet followed by Megan blasting her with the Rainbow of Light to finish her off.
  • During the Finale Arc the CMC and Button Mash manage to beat the Blank Wolf's Evil Knock Off, the Hound of Tindalos/Moonhowler, a creation of Nyarlathotrot made from himself, with the same Ret-Gone abilities the original Wolf had. They do have the Blank Wolf with them (which finishes it after the CMC and Button cripple it), but he's currently a much weaker puppy and needs the CMC and Button's help.
  • Applejack manages to kill Nyarlathotrot after merging with Nightmare Mirror to become Veritas. She does it pretty literally as she bucks his soul out of the universe
  • The CMC manage to destroy Discord's Goatcord Detachment permanently, likewise taking Discord's insanity along with him and permanently damaging Discord.
  • The Mane Seven (Fluttercruel included) and Spike manage to destroy Paxphobia, Havoc's berserk Avatar in the final battle with a Combined Energy Attack using the potential Elements of every pony in Equestria.
• Did You Just Flip Off Cthulhu?:
  • Shining Armor is hopelessly outmatched against General Admiral Makarov in their first fight. Even after Thunderchild saves his flank, things still don't look good. The two of them discover Makarov does not take 'Equestrian wit' well and proceed to spend several moments snarking the heck out of him to get him furious. Becomes a better example of this trope later on when we discover Makarov's true nature.
    Shining Armor: What? I'd finally found a weakspot in the jerk's armor, why not hit away at it?
  • Dark World!Grogar's last act when he was banished back to his prison after his war with Discord was to laugh in Discord's face.
  • Apple Pie tries doing this to Rancor. Rancor isn't effected by her Logic Bomb powers and gives her a nasty wound that takes her out of the fight for awhile.
  • Minty Pie's presence in the Final Battle is pretty much one long one to Nightmare Paradox. She's able to handle herself, but isn't powerful enough to do any lasting damage to her. However, she does make a good distraction and her refusal to die begins driving Paradox into a Villainous Breakdown.
  • There was also Dark World!Discord forcing Nightmare Paradox to endure several thousand pictures of him mooning himself in the mirror set to a loop while Twilight sees his memories from the Memory Spell. While this did help Twilight by not letting Paradox see what memories she got (causing her to be more cautious in the fight), it seems Discord mainly did it just to piss her off after enduring an And I Must Scream fate at her hooves for so long.
  • There's also one of the fics' iconic moments when G1 Mimic pulls off a You Shall Not Pass! on Discord. She knows its going to get her killed, but does it to let the others including Celestia and Luna, her daughters get away. She then exploits this trope by telling Discord the way to Earth has been destroyed, trapping him in Equestria, causing him to have a Villainous Breakdown that gives her an edge. Her last words also qualify, as after shattering his tooth permanently, she spits his own claim she wouldn't be able to scratch him back in his face before he kills her.
    Mimic: Who can't hurt who now?
  • Dark World!Twilight smacking Nightmare Eclipse in the face with a soapbox to distract her for phase one of the Mane Cast's Batman Gambit. The rest of the Mane Cast proceed to pretend to be Defiant to the End to distract her long enough for Twilight to prepare for phase two. Finally, Discord calls her from the afterlife on Anarchy's cellphone to distract her long enough for the final blow to be charged up.
  • Gilda heavily distracts Nihilis by doing this without giving up.
• Died Happily Ever After: The Tales Mane Cast, who ultimately reunite in heaven in the end.
• Diegetic Soundtrack Usage:
  • The mane cast and Trixie sing the show's theme song in the penultimate episode during a party celebrating Trixie's recovery and Heel–Face Turn. Considering it was chosen by Pinkie Pie, this makes perfect sense.
  • Princess Celestia sings the G1 My Little Pony theme song to break Gaia's brainwashing on the foals that were once Ponyville.
• Disabled Snarker: Scootaloo's Evil Knockoff in the Finale Arc is blind (due to being based off such a Scootaloo from a Dark Fic) but quite snarky.
• Disability Immunity: Laughter!Applejack's world's version of Pinkamena has multiple personalities (though apparently in a far more stable form), which rendered her immune to the Stallions In Black's memory wiping spell, as the other personalities would remember what the one that got wiped forgot.
• Disc-One Final Boss:
  • Loneliness serves as the main antagonist for the story arc about saving Trixie but meets her end when Trixie breaks free and accepts her Element Of Magic. However, shortly there after, Princess Gaia appears takes her place as Big Bad.
  • Dark World!Discord was the Big Bad for the majority of the Dark World Series, only to get stabbed In the Back by his sister Rancor, mortally wounding him. He then transfers his remaining power into his daughter Fluttercruel, allowing her to transform into a true Draconequus and become the Dragon Ascendant. While the heroes do confront Discord afterwards, Discord's on his deathbed and of no threat at all to them, in fact he doesn't even really try to antagonize them all that much. On top of that, there's been warnings of an 'Alicorn Witch' on her way to destroy the world, implying Odyne!Cruelty was merely the Disc Two Final Boss. Pinkie Pie even lampshades this fact (from Heaven). Said Alicorn Witch turns out to be The Nameless Passenger, who finally reveals herself as a version of Twilight Tragedy who went Nightmare and trapped Discord in a "Groundhog Day" Loop.
  • Turns out that Makarov was this for the Shining Armor Arc. After Shining feeds him to the Wolf, chapter 19.2 reveals the Wolf might still be chasing him.
  • Nyarlathotrot is the first the villains of the Rumors Arc to be defeated, despite having been The Heavy.
• Disney Villain Death:
  • The Master/Fluffy the Terrible from Clover's Gaiden Story ends up being sent falling off a mountain to his death by Bahamut crashing through his shack.
  • According to a Loose Canon story, Somnambula was (potentially accidentally) knocked off a opera house balcony to her death by Shady during a fight sometime after Discord's first defeat.
  • Ashley, one of Hydia's family, falls to her death during the Final Battle of the Age of Myths when Katrina and Rep knock her off her mount with a Fast Ball Special midflight.
• Disproportionate Retribution: General-Admiral Makarov's reaction to Shining Armor not knowing who he is? To try to assassinate him as a plan A, with plan B being subjecting him to a Fate Worse than Death.
• Divine Conflict: The Alicorn/Draconequi War. The Draconequi elders wanted to destroy Equus because the ponies destroying the Windigos harmed Entropy and the entire Draconequi family, meaning they could become a threat to reality as a whole. The Alicorns didn't want to allow a world to be destroyed over a 'what if'. Ultimately, the Alicorns won when Cadenza killed Havoc's out of control Avatar. To note, Havoc fully admits the war didn't benefit anyone and actually damaged his family more than the reason he decided to do it in the first place, and is shown refusing to repeat his mistake a few times. He has zero intent of letting it happening again, and given he's an Elder, it likely won't. He's also a Graceful Loser who accepted the outcome completely.
• Distant Finale: The end of the fic proper is the Mane Cast and Discord in the distant, utopian future having just finished Halflight's recording of the story, revealing many characters have ascended into Alicorns.
• Divine Intervention:
  • The Fires of Friendship that destroyed the Windigos was Fauna Luster lending Her power when Clover, Smart Cookie, and Pansy forged a friendship in spite of their impending deaths and the racial hatred so prevalent in their world. According to Celestia, while Fauna Luster always has Her power offered, very few mortals have ever managed to actually open the door for Her to intervene. Also, the Elements of Harmony use The Power of Friendship to tap into Her power as well.
  • After most of the Breezies are taken directly to Heaven by Abbatissa, the Alicorn of Prayer, Zipzee and Daisyslow want to send Breezie Blossom, their home, with them. Abbatissa tells them to pray, which they do, and their prayers are answered.
  • In a way, Dark World!Discord's Backup from Otherworld moment qualifies, seeing as he is a God and did so using his brother's aid.
  • The Gods come in mass to help with the Rumors Arc, due to the Godzilla Threshold having been crossed.
  • Played With as of the Last Battle Arc epilogue, as the Concepts realized that they have been acting too overtly in helping Mortals and may be effectively stunting their growth in the long term. Meanwhile, the ones that have already incarnated into the world (Celestia, Luna, Cadence and Discord) already decided to heavily nerf themselves to prevent them from being a Spotlight-Stealing Squad as this is the story of mortals, not gods. Not to mention, both the Elements of Harmony and the Tree of Harmony are considered exceptions despite tapping into Fauna Luster's power as they are already part of the mortal world. Finally, the future villains judging by the canon timeline from FIM Season 3 and beyond are no longer dangerous enough to warrant such cases. They will go back to helping mortals from behind the veil in subtle but still vital ways, as they did before, such as subtly making a lightning bolt miss a pony in a storm. Pandora is understandably miffed that she can no longer visit Shining Armor as Concepts can no longer play favourites. Nevertheless, Word of God stated that this doesn't excuse their defeats in the future as one of the big themes of the POV series is that 'there are no background ponies'.
• Do Not Call Me "Paul": Most Nightmares have this to a degree, for varying reasons. However, Manacle and Mirror have it the worst out of shame.
• Do Not Taunt Cthulhu:
  • A mortal Pegasus decided to permanently kill the Demi God son of Celestia's sister Venus. This was a very bad idea, as Venus did not take it well.
  • General-Admiral Makarov believes he's succeeded in becoming a God and thus beyond the reach of the Wolf. He spends a few minutes taunting it and punches it in the face. It replies by slashing him, causing his stolen lights to begin leaking out and ultimately erases him from existence. Granted, it was going to erase him anyway, but he probably didn't do himself any favors clopping it off.
• Don't Make Me Take My Belt Off!:
  • Applebloom apparently got a spanking for leaving a Applejack in Everfree while she was shrunken by Poison Joke.
  • Scootaloo gets a spanking from Rainbow Dash for her reckless attempt at saving Sweetie Belle. While it worked she still did a very irresponsible thing in doing so.
  • Applejack threatens to have Twilight age regressed to a filly so she can do this to her if she endangers herself going after Shining on her own. She wasn't joking, and after locking Scootaloo in a trunk to do so has it done so, allowing Cadence to spank her.
• Doomed by Canon: Inverted. After Applejack stares into the pool of Truth and gains the ability to discern lies at a glance, Luna makes it pretty explicit that her sense of Truth will drive her nuts if the canon timeline diverges too much from the POV-verse. Fortunately, that's taken care off by the Crisis Crossover of all the other staple AJ's of the multiverse teaming up and taking out the most evilest AJ with alternate AJ's based off of the other Elements of Harmony. So that happened.
• Doorstopper: The main series is composed of over 1.8 million words. And that's not counting all the sub-stories, spin-offs, and fan-made stories.
• Doppelmerger: In the Dark World arc, Twilight meets Minty Pie and it is discovered that they are both reincarnations of G3 Minty ^note Twilight is Minty's "Light" (her soul) while Minty Pie is her "Shadow" (her physical appearance). When they make physical contact they start to involuntarily fuse together. Fortunately, they break apart in time to avoid anything permanent, and while shaken, they're fine afterwards.
• Downer Beginning:
  • Season 0, "Discorded Ponies," is this, given that it deals with the Mane Cast going through the Discording they went through in canon, and ends with a look into the Dark World timeline.
  • Dark World, being a Bad Future, starts with this.
  • The Finale Arc begins with Discord's endgame going off.
• Downer Ending:
  • The Bad Future Alternate Ending, though Word of God says they'd like to write or see someone write a good follow up where this is turned to at least a Bittersweet Ending if nothing else.
  • In Applejack's Healing chapter, it's implied things may change.
  • Someone finally wrote just that story right here. The main story eventually revisits it to give it one.
  • Part one of Chrysalis' origin story ends with Chrysalis slaughtering her entire home village to hide her existence and defeating the witch doctor that tried to end her reign of terror before it could truly begin.
  • The Rumors Arc begins with Discord and company Rewriting Reality and turning it into a Grimdark mess, with the rest of the Arc being trying to return it to normal.
• Dragged Off to Hell:
  • The ponies from Sunnytown are dragged back to the town's boundaries in this fashion.
  • Almost happens to Dark World!Applejack when Shadows of Oblivion try to drag her to Entropy's Realm.
  • Dark World!Discord is ultimately dragged off to Entropy's realm through the wound Rancor left in him. Though, by his words, he may consider this a better fate than the one he was presently experiencing.
  • Havoc, being Hell, can naturally do this at will, but normally to swallow a condemned soul.
• The Dragon:
  • Cheerilee as Princess Gaia's Knight.
  • In the Bad Future, it appears Twilight Tragedy plays this role for Discord.
    • Though now that she's been redeemed, Fluttercruel seems to be shaping up to the role.
  • G1 Shady to Discord in Origins, because she's his mother (he got to Equus by being born through her) and she genuinely loved him, something Discord gladly exploited.
  • As of the end of Mind Games, Diamond Tiara has become Discord's new Dragon.
  • Nightmare Paradox has five; Nightmares Banneret, Granfalloon, Mirror, Manacle, and Whisper.
  • Technically speaking, General Admiral Makarov is The Dragon to Father Deer and the Hooviets, as he's not officially their leader. Unofficially, however, he's the acting Big Bad due to being both The Heavy and playing his superiors as his pawns, making him a Dragon-in-Chief and Dragon with an Agenda.
    • Makarov has four Dragons of his own in the form of four ponies he converted into cyborgs modeled after Alicorns named Yablokovodka, Saharnoj Vaty, Lunabaleta, and Puzyri. Shining ends up killing Yablokovodka first, revealing all four are aware of their situation but unable to do anything about it.
  • Queen Chrysalis' Co-Dragons appear to be General Hercules Beetle and Digger Wasp. Even though she demotes Hercules and makes his brother Goliath General, the story still focuses on him out of Chrysalis' changelings and Digger Wasp was key to her plans working. Both are shown to answer directly to her.
    • It turns out that Professor Kabuto, who seemed to simply be the Evil Genius of the group, is actually on this level due to enhancing himself heavily through his experiments. He's not only important to her over all plan (being the only Changeling who understands the rune), but powerful enough Queen Chrysalis made him a trap onto himself.
• Dramatic Irony:
  • Twice now the readers have known something about the current Big Bad the characters don't, such as Fluttershy becoming Nightmare Whisper and Discord's plan to escape.
  • During "Modern Major Evil Overlord", the story crosses over with one of the Recursive Fanfiction pieces when Twilight Tragedy inadvertently redeems an alternate universe's Discord. Anyone who read said fanfic will recognize the scene, but Twilight has no idea she's doing anything more than thinking to herself.
  • During the next chapter "Lemons N' Flint Rocks", has it as well, in a similar fashion. Apple Pie is talking with Twilight Tragedy, but has no idea she is, as Tragedy is disguised as an Earth Pony filly named Half-Light Dawn. She unknowingly, thinking she's just talking to a normal filly, ends up triggering a Villainous BSoD in Tragedy.
  • The Nameless Passenger talks to Traitor Dash to drive her into a rage and distract her. Twilight as Halflight Noon is unaware of this while the audience knows.
  • It is confirmed in the Finale Arc (and technically the end of Mind Games arc) that Fluttershy became an alicorn after the Elements of Harmony defeated her Nightmare form, though none of friends knows about this. The only exceptions are Pinkie Pie, because, well she's Pinkie (The note she anonymously gave to Fluttershy instructed her to use "Gaia's power" to prevent Golden Tiara/Screwball from getting erased.) Applejack might have putted the pieces together (during her story, AJ's Dreams, her trip through the Truth and stopping her potential nightmare self, AJ was stated to not be surprised that her nightmare was turned into a little alicorn after being purified by the elements of Harmony). Twilight, Rarity, and Rainbow Dash gotten hints throughout about what Fluttershy became, but they did not put the pieces together (Rarity might've been the closest when she and Fluttershy had the talk during "Read it and Cry" chapter, but even then she dismissed the thought for now.)
  • In "Tag You're Not An It", Rarity comments the zombie apocalypse genre is older than time, Applejack replies she's exaggerating. The previous scene shows that indeed, the deities made a parody of it before then.
  • When Button summons help with his game menu, orbital lasers clear the path for the Moonpearl. The audience finds out this is Dissy, Discord's Split Personality doing it but the heroes don't know that.
• Drinking Game: One of the games the group considered for Fluttercruel's Cute-Ceañera. It's rejected due to what happened last time Twilight got drunk and that Fluttercruel was afraid of what Pinkie Pie might do if she gets drunk.
• Drunk on Milk: Saltwater apparently has the same effect on ponies as an alcohol. In the "Black Pearl" chapter, Fluttercruel/Fluttershy end up getting drunk on it, in part because Fluttershy doesn't drink normally. It's revealed the next chapter that they drunk so much that it would've gotten Princess Celestia drunk!
• Drunk on the Dark Side: Havoc's Avatar in Origins. The chaos generated by the war was so intoxicating it caused it to undergo Sanity Slippage into a Mad God and go out of Havoc's control.
• Dungeon Bypass: Attempted in Dark World when the heroes try blasting Discord's castle from a distance with the Elements of Harmony. It simply sprouts legs and runs away. Double Subverted in that they convince it not to hinder them.
• Dying as Yourself: Happens to all but one of Makarov's Alicorn Cyborgs when they're killed, though the third simply didn't get the chance as she was killed instantly. Saharnoj Vaty also manages to fight through Makarov's control long enough to self-destruct to destroy Skyfall.
• Dying Moment of Awesome:
  • This universe's version of Mimic was killed fighting Discord when he appeared in Equestria for the first time, knocking out his tooth in their fight. According to Princess Luna, she's the only one to ever successfully injure Discord in battle, and she didn't even have the Elements Of Harmony.
  • Dark World!Discord's last act before dying is getting Twilight to use her Memory Spell on him. Not only does this Out Gambit the Nameless Passenger, but forces her to endure several hundred pictures of him mooning himself in the mirror set to a continuous loop. Discord truly died as he lived.
  • In the early loops of Dark World, including the first, Apple Pie died in a Heroic Sacrifice distracting Discord so Twilight's plan to reset time could work, managing to break his horn off before being brutally murdered by the enraged tyrant. Unfortunately, that Twilight was the one became Nightmare Paradox, causing her to turn it into a Senseless Sacrifice.
  • A previous loop that saw Trixie become an Alicorn. While Paradox defeated and likely killed her, Trixie went down fighting and left a Wound That Will Not Heal in the form of a fourth degree burn on Paradox's face that's the reason for her White Mask of Doom.
  • Saharnoj Vaty, the third of Makarov's Alicorn Cyborg Co-Dragons, managing to fight off Makarov's control with The Power of Love she has for her sister long enough to self-destruct and destroy Makarov's Skyfall weapon. As the Interviewers point out afterwards, she beat Makarov in the best way possible: by proving he was wrong to believe love was weak.
  • Dima sacrifices himself to save Gilda's life when Makarov attempts to kill her as part of his 'script'. Realizing he's crippled even if he survived, Dima refuses medical attention so he can ruin Makarov's planned climax with his death in order to enrage and weaken him. The result enrages Makarov so badly that for a second the entire base flickers and Makarov suffers a temporary Glamour Failure. When Makarov appears again, for the first time in the entire story that Makarov's composure doesn't suddenly snap back to confidence and he's still in a psychotic rage.
  • Sunset and Ranger die saving a pilot's life while helping stop a megastorm that's threatening Caruba, Sunset dying in the process of trying to save Ranger's life. They're even awarded a Solar Horseshoe and a Lunar Horseshoe posthumously for their actions and Celestia has them buried in the royal catacombs with Equestria's heroes.
  • Scorpan managing to actually wound the giant spider that killed him when no other Centaur minus a magically boosted Tirek could so much as touch it.
  • Most of the centaurs we see die fighting Tirek go out in a blaze of glory, but his father gets credit for refusing to fight Tirek, because Tirek wanted a fight.
  • Rumors!Button Mash is erased from existence after holding off Nightmare!Diamond long enough for Apple Bloom to fix the magic printing press and set things right. The Elders decide to resurrect him in the end.
• Dynamic Entry: Pinkie Pie does this in the Final Battle with Nightmare Whisper via Offscreen Teleportation.

---