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    TV Tropes-specific 
  • Partial namer for 20% More Awesome.note 
  • Alt-Trope Namer for Alicorn, which is more frequently called Winged Unicorn.
  • Inspiration for Wrong Context Magic.note 

    Voice Actors 
  • Awesome, Dear Boy: John de Lancie has never passed up the opportunity to reprise his role as Discord. He agreed to voice the character for his debut two-part episode, but asked to be left uncredited since he thought it would be a one-and-done voice acting gig that would be nothing more than a Parental Bonus. After the episodes aired, De Lancie received tons of fan mail praising his performance as Discord, and wondering if the character was due for any reappearances - and by that point, he'd forgotten having ever been on My Little Pony to begin with. Once he found out how big a deal the show and his character was to many fans, De Lancie decided to take it more seriously. He immensely enjoyed coming back to voice Discord any time the character is featured.
  • The Cast Showoff: Andrea Libman (Fluttershy/Pinkie Pie) and Ashleigh Ball (Rainbow Dash/Applejack) provide their own singing voicesnote . Ashleigh in particular is the lead singer of the band Hey Ocean!. There's a reason why fans love Rainbow Dash's singing. Rainbow Dash finally got a song to herself in Season 5.
  • Celebrity Voice Actor: Not counting de Lancie, the first guest star and main recurring one, episodes featuring a Special Guest have been a Once a Season occurrence since Season 4.
  • Children Voicing Children: The Cutie Mark Crusaders were initially voiced by two 10-year-olds and a 13-year-old, fulfilling this trope for the first several years of the show's run.note  Most other child characters are voiced by adult actors, with a few exceptions:
    • Pipsqueak, voiced by William Lawrenson in his first appearance and Graham Verchere from then on, though Graham's voice is deepening as of his third year in the role.
    • Babs Seed, perhaps to foreshadow her status as the fourth Cutie Mark Crusader, is voiced by Brynna Drummond, a counterpart to the main three.
    • The two fillies appearing in "Fame and Misfortune" are voiced by child actresses, likely to serve the episode's allegory in which they represent the show's child audience.
    • Wind Sprint from "Common Ground" is voiced by Patton Oswalt's then nine-year old daughter Alice.
  • Cross-Dressing Voices:
    • Cathy Weseluck as Spike as well as the mailpony in "The Last Roundup" and Truffle Shuffle in "Ponyville Confidential", Tabitha St. Germain as Pound Cake and the Pegasus versions of Dr. Whooves/Time Turner and Meadow Song, Jan Rabson as Mulia Mild, and Ashleigh Ball as the buffalo who talks to Spike in "Over a Barrel" as well as one of the dragons in "Dragon Quest" (unless the dragon in question is Crackle). Also, while both Derpy and her original VA Tabitha St. Germain are female, Tabitha later revealed that at the time she was recording the episode "The Last Roundup", she thought Derpy was male and voiced her as such. Finally, the elderly pony Goldie Delicious, one of the Apple family's cousins, a Crazy Cat Lady, and one of the Gold Horseshoe Gals, is voiced by Peter New, who also does the voice of Applejack's brother, Big Macintosh.
    • In the Polish dub, Little Strongheart is referred to as male, but is still voiced by a woman.
    • Possibly Spitfire in the Polish dub. She's voiced by a man, but she might just be male in that dub. Luckily she's voiced by a woman, starting from "Hurricane Fluttershy".
    • Derpy, Mane Allgood, Babs Seed, and Photo Finish are voiced by the same man in the Hungarian dub.
    • Spike is voiced by women in most languages (including Motoko Kumai in Japanese) except in Brazilian Portuguese, German, later seasons of the Czech dub, Hungarian, the Russian and Canadian French dubs of the movie, and Arabic.
    • Pipsqueak is voiced by Akiko Yajima in the Japanese dub.
    • The voice grunts that Featherweight makes in the Japanese dub were provided by Izumi Kitta, Rainbow Dash's voice actress.
    • Rainbowshine is voiced by Trevor Devall in "Rainbow Falls".
  • Dawson Casting: Done for a majority of other child characters with exceptions noted under Children Voicing Children. Happened to Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo when their VAs got older.
  • "Do It Yourself" Theme Tune: Rainbow Dash, Applejack and Fluttershy actually sing their lines in the opening theme.
  • Descended Creator:
    • Bulk Biceps was originally voiced by series supervising director Jayson Thiessen. The role then was taken over by Michael Dobson.
    • King Sombra was voiced by storyboard artist and series director Big Jim Miller in his debut episode. Alvin Saunders took over the role in Season 9
  • Dummied Out:
  • Inspiration for the Work: Lauren Faust used to play with the old My Little Pony toys, but felt the animated shows had little conflict. So when Hasbro gave her the opportunity to develop G4, she based many of the show's settings and characters' personality traits on her own childhood imagination. In her words, she made Friendship is Magic for her 8-year-old self.
  • Irony as She Is Cast: Although Rebecca Shoichet is a professional singer, Twilight rarely sings, almost only singing now in season premieres and finales. This is an accidental example, as she was originally only brought in to sing the theme song. Then when Tara Strong opted not to record her lines in Canada (and therefore could not do the singing), they noticed Rebecca Shoichet's voice sounded similar to hers. Although it is played straight in the second Equestria Girls movie where the cast have formed a band and the character Shoichet voices (Sunset Shimmer) is the only one not a member of it, though Sunset does do some singing both in the film and later on.
  • Make-A-Wish Contribution:
    • In "Trade Ya!", the disabled pony with a wheelchair on his hind legs, Stellar Eclipse, is played by Sylvain-Nicholas LeVasseur-Portelance, who has spinal muscular atrophy.
    • In "Top Bolt", Angel Wings is voiced by Alexis "Lexi" Heule, who has congenital heart disease and connective tissue disorder. The character Angel Wings is based off an original character Lexi designed.
  • Money, Dear Boy: While he later came to appreciate the role, John de Lancie originally became Discord for a quick buck. He had completely forgotten about it by the time fan mail started rolling in.note 
  • Non-Singing Voice:
    • Throughout Seasons 1-3, Sweetie Belle's singing voice is provided by Michelle Creber, who speaks and sings for Apple Bloom. This makes Sweetie Belle's version of "Fluttershy's Lullaby" all the more Awesome when you learn that Michelle was 10 when she sang it.note 
    • Pinkie Pie's singing voice is Shannon Chan-Kent. Andrea Libman, however, voices Fluttershy for both her speaking AND singing parts. The explanation is that Daniel Ingram had Shannon, a friend of his, do some of the original demos (including the main theme) and Hasbro liked her Pinkie voice so much they insisted on keeping her as the singing voice. Andrea Libman has confirmed that she does do some of Pinkie's singing, probably on the shorter songs but she hasn't elaborated beyond that. According to Daniel Ingram, Pinkie songs sung by Andrea include "Happy Monthiversary" from "Baby Cakes" as well as "You're a Cranky Doodle Donkey", the "Welcome Song" and "Cranky Doodle Joy" from "A Friend in Deed".
    • While Tara Strong has done some singing roles in other shows in the past, Rebecca Shoichet sings for Twilight because Strong records her lines separately, and the ensemble songs require the actresses to be recorded together. Similarly, Kazumi Evans sings for Rarity, although Tabitha St. Germain has sung before in past shows.
    • The talking Twilight Sparkle Animated Storyteller and Pinkie Pie Animated Storyteller toys have different voices when they speak, but have singing voices (taken from the show) done by Rebecca Shoichet and Shannon Chan-Kent.
  • Only So Many Canadian Actors: Being a show that's voiced in Canada, many Canadian voice actors and voice actresses have worked on this show. In some cases, some Canadian actors known for live-action works have perfomed minor voice roles on this show.
  • The Original Darrin: In the German dub, Hannes Maurer (Spike) moved out of Germany in 2015. He was replaced by Jan Makino for seasons 5 and 6. Maurer returned to Germany in time for Season 7, reprising Spike in the movie as well.
    • In the Italian dub, Chiara Francese replaced Camilla Gallo as Rarity in Season 7. Camilla Gallo came back for the movie and Season 8.
    • In the Hungarian dub:
      • Princess Luna/Nightmare Moon is usually voiced by Kriszta Nemeth, but normal Luna was voiced by Kitty Kantor (Apple Bloom) in "Friendship is Magic, pt. 2".
      • Discord is usually voiced by Kornel Pusztaszeri, but in Keep Calm and Flutter On he was voiced by Karoly Kassai.
  • Playing Against Type:
  • Promoted Fanboy:
    • Every Celebrity Voice Actor the show has ever had (except for John de Lancie, whose casting was an Actor Allusion) became cast members after publicly professing a liking of the show and/or its fandom. In Yankovic's case it took three seasons, but the others were approached to do episodes seemingly minutes after showing their appreciation. As for de Lancie, he was approached before the fandom was public knowledge and swiftly forgot about the work he'd done for the show, but became an advocate for the fandom after his first episode aired. His upgrade to recurring cast member might qualify every celebrity guest for this trope.
    • Brony musician Gabriel Brown is already so prominent in the fan community that he often attends events as a guest with equal billing to actual cast and crew, and is best friends with cast member Michelle Creber. He's getting into voice acting at the moment, but his only voice role in the series to date has been as part of the choir, starting in Friendship Games.
    • Two fans have gotten the opportunity via Make-A-Wish foundation to design and voice their own characters for the show.
  • Reclusive Artist: Little is known about the current life of Madeleine Peters, the voice of Scootaloo, other than that she currently lives in Baltimore and is trying to pursue a career in animation. Not helping matters is the fact that she's not as active online as her two partners Claire Corlett and Michelle Creber and that she doesn't attend conventions as often.
  • Unspecified Role Credit: For the first two seasons, only the voice actors for the Mane 6, Spike, The Cutie Mark Crusaders and Princess Celestia were credited, with a total of eleven actors including the singing voices. However, by the time Season 3 came in, this effect started to fade, and later, when additional voice actors for the aforementioned two seasons were confirmed by Word of God, faded completely.
  • Voices in One Room: The Vancouver-based voice actors typically record together, for both speaking and singing. (note that this leaves out Tara Strong and John de Lancie, who live in LA and overdub a scratch-track).
  • Woman of a Thousand Voices: Tabitha St. Germain is essentially the Billy West of the show. Again she voices Rarity, Princess Luna/Nightmare Moon, Granny Smith, Rarity's mom, Mrs. Cup Cake, Pound Cake, Photo Finish, Derpy Hooves (in the original version, at least), and multiple other background ponies. Even her co-workers often mention in interviews how blown away they are at Tabitha's talent. Tabitha herself was very surprised to hear that her co-workers had such praise for her.
    • Asami Yoshida and Yumi Uchiyama are essentially the Japanese equivalents of Tabitha as they provide the majority of the voices of supporting and background characters in the Japanese dub.
    • Suzuko Mimori also displays a distinct range of voices when voicing Pinkie's "party guests" in "Party of One".

    Staff and Production 
  • Bad Export for You:
    • The McDonald's Happy Meals toys in Malaysia. For whatever brain-dead reason, Fluttershy, Rarity, Applejack and Princess Celestia are not available in the country. Since the show is not available in the country because no Pay TV provider carries Boomerang (Cartoon Network Southeast Asia now also carry FIM, though), McDonalds and Hasbro probably thought they could get away with this, made even worse that Boomerang was replaced by Toonami later on...
    • Some of the dubs, from the previews of episode 3 (different from the actual broadcast version) seen so far, seem to be of the low-to-no-budget variety. The Canadian French demo (now gone from official site) is probably the worst.
    • In Canada, the show is broadcast on Treehouse TV, which primarily airs educational preschool shows. Thus, the channel has censored many episodes, the most well-known one being the silencing of all instances of the word "loser" from "Boast Busters", "Call of the Cutie", and "Party of One" (though not from "Sonic Rainboom", "The Return of Harmony – Part 2", or "Hearth's Warming Eve").
    • Now there's reports going around that Boomerang's airings of the show in some regions are incomplete, bringing in only half of each season.
    • Japanese fans who started out watching fansubs of the English version of the series are disappointed that the Japanese dub is cut for time, about some translation decisions like Zecora not speaking in rhyme, and that while some songs are dubbed into Japanese, others (such as "Winter Wrap Up", "Art of the Dress", "Becoming Popular" and "Love is in Bloom") are left in English with Japanese subtitles.
    • The Croatian HRT dub of the show. The demo dub of episode 3 was actually very decent, and then in November 2014 the country finally experienced the premiere of the show - which saw countless flaws from the studio that ended up dubbing it. Namely, first there's the issue with voice actors; some weren't very fitting for the characters they voiced, and many provided lifeless performances. Then there are localizations which range from sensible (e.g. "Iskra Sumrak" for Twilight, which means "Sparkle Twilight") to actual human names to bizarre naming choices (such as calling Queen Chrysalis "Crystalina"). It also has a massive case of a Hong Kong Dub; on top of recorded voices not matching up with lip-syncing properly (which is, of course, inevitable for many languages), the dub is absolutely rife with audio mixing errors such as needlessly looping character lines, copy-pasting existing recordings (which sometimes leads to dialogue that ranges from a single inaccuracy to dialogue that makes zero sense in context), playing irrelevant sound clips at inappropriate times, recordings overlapping each other, and lines that are blatantly too short or long to fit (sometimes triggering the previous errors). And that's not even touching on other various flaws such as script errors, songs (off-key singing, unpolished lyrics, excerpts from the Serbian Mini dub and combinations of those), and a few of the custom-made recaps getting facts wrong (such as the one from the second half of The Return of Harmony, Part 2 claiming that Applejack found and tried to use the Elements of Harmony instead of Twilight) or telling what's going to happen next (in a couple of instances straight up spoiling a plot twist as well) even when things related to the described events have yet to occur.
  • Banned in China:
    • So far, 8 episodes have been skipped in Turkey due to the country's conservative Muslim standards. Notably this affects most episodes featuring celebrations comparable to real-life religiously-influenced holidays. Some episodes have been censored as well. This most notably removes pretty much every instance of one character having a crush on another. Hilariously, Spike's secret crush in "Green Isn't Your Color" was changed to him noticing that "Rarity put on weight."(!)
    • This also happens with the version broadcast on Cartoon Network Arabic.
    • Both the Italian dub and the UK broadcast left out "The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000" because in both countries "cider" refers to an alcoholic beverage. Albeit the Italian dub director confirmed the episode itself was entirely dubbed, but will be released only on DVD. Similarly, every scene in "Bats!" where Rainbow Dash freaks for the lack of cider was removed in the Italian and UK TV airings, but will probably be restored in the DVD release. The UK broadcast also skipped "Where the Apples Are", which also features apple cider.
    • Canada's Treehouse TV skipped the episode "Party Pooped" when premiering Season 5.
  • Beam Me Up, Scotty!: The phrase "love and tolerance"/"love and tolerate" (which originated from an Image Macro) is usually associated with this show, but it's only been used in the Expanded Universe (in the Tie-In Novel Twilight Sparkle and the Crystal Heart Spell) and for The Merch (on a shirt, on a wallet, and in the description of another shirt and hoodie), not in the show itself. It does appear in the lyrics for the cut Equestria Girls song My Little Pony Friends.
  • Breakthrough Hit:
  • Content Leak:
    • Daniel Ingram was so proud of his work on the "Winter Wrap-up" song, the first several-minute-long song on the show and the first except for the theme song to be sung by not only Pinkie Pie, that he put the song including the animated sequence on YouTube one week early to show it to his friends. He didn't set the video to private, though. Three days later, Hasbro demanded he take the video down again. Wondering how come they even knew about it, he checked it, just to find some 12,000 praising comments under it that clearly weren't written by little girls. And that's how he discovered the bronies.
    • There will be occasional times when episodes are posted to iTunes before hastily being taken down, but that usually results in the episode being downloaded and spread quickly.
    • The digital masters of My Little Pony: The Movie (2017) leaked just as it was about to hit theaters. Probably a good thing in this case, since somewhere along the line the visuals were messed with by adding a vignette.
    • During Season 7, several later episodes of the season were leaked online prior to their official air dates.
    • During the Season 7-8 hiatus, Hasbro suffered two larger-scale leaks that saw the leaks of unfinished Season 8 episodes, a new title sequence, a tentative timetable for future fourth generation happenings, and very early concept art for a possible fifth generation.
    • During the hiatus between the two halves of the final season, a group in the Netherlands meant to only release up to episode 13 early. They accidentally leaked the rest of the season, including the series finale. Albeit in Dutch, but still.
    • Episodes 22-26 in English, as well as some unreleased scripts, were also leaked online in apparent hack.
    • And a ''huge'' leak of animatics, scripts, concept art and more happened right before the planned broadcast of the series finale.
  • Creator Backlash: The staff later regretted making the infamous edits to Derpy's appearance in "The Last Roundup". They folded to Moral Guardians into making her less offensive, sparking flame wars all over the internet.
  • Creator Breakdown: At a convention, Meghan McCarthy said of writing the show that the reason why one of the main characters goes crazy in many of the episodes she's written (especially Twilight in "Lesson Zero") is that they were mostly composed in the wee hours of the morning under a tight deadline, reflecting her stress.
  • Defictionalization: The official ones (for the fanmade ones, see this trope's listing in the Fandom folder):
  • Deleted Scene:
    • From "The Ticket Master", a scene of Big Macintosh reacting to and pulling the new plow during Applejack's Imagine Spot (seen in a since removed video from one of the show's animators) and a scene featuring Mr. Greenhooves (mentioned by the show's art director).
    • From "Applebuck Season", Applejack "helping" Rarity too (mentioned by the episode's writer Amy Keating Rogers).
    • From "Suited for Success", a shot of Sea Swirl, Lemon Hearts, Cloud Kicker, Merry May, and Minuette at the beginning of the first fashion show (seen in a since removed video from one of the show's animators).
    • From "Stare Master", an extra verse to Sweetie Belle's version of the "Hush Now Lullaby" (revealed by the episode's writer Chris Savino).
    • From "The Best Night Ever", one or more Cut Songs, including the original version of Pinkie Pie's "Piggy Dance" from "Baby Cakes", longer and to the tune of the "Chicken Dance" (mentioned by Daniel Ingram and Amy Keating Rogers).
    • From "The Return of Harmony – Part 1", Applejack saying "Hope everything's ok back in Ponyville. I don't know if Big Macintosh and Granny Smith have enough butter for all that popcorn" (revealed and detailed by the episode's writer M.A. Larson), Rainbow Dash saying "Get off that cloud and put 'em up! I'm not afraid of you! Come on, Marquess of Queensbury rules! Let's go!" instead of "Get off there and put 'em up! Come on! Let's go!" (revealed by the episode's writer M.A. Larson) and from either that episode or "The Return of Harmony – Part 2", Applejack saying "While y'all were gone a pod of whales flew in and handed us the elements" (revealed by the episodes' writer M.A. Larson).
      • Rainbow Dash's 'Marquess of Queensbury rules' line would have been significant as an allusion to Q, who used the same line to goad Commander Sisko in an episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.
    • From "Luna Eclipsed", a scene featuring Rarity giving Princess Luna a makeover (described by Lauren Faust and one of the show's layout artists. Luna's unused design can be seen here).
    • From "The Last Roundup", a longer version of the scene featuring Derpy, then named Ditzy Doo, including a flashback explaining just how she caused so much damage to Ponyville Town Hall (described by the episode's writer Amy Keating Rogers).
    • From "MMMystery on the Friendship Express", Applejack being one of the culprits (mentioned and described by the episode's writer Amy Keating Rogers).
    • From "Too Many Pinkie Pies", some scenes, including a "big scene" for the badger, but no major jokes (mentioned by layout supervisor Tim Stuby).
    • From "Magic Duel", a few layout scenes (mentioned by layout artist Holly Giesbrecht) and a scene of Trixie interacting with Mayor Mare (revealed by the episode's writer M.A. Larson).
    • M.A. Larson revealed a list of scenes for Slice Of Life which did not make the final cut. These include:
      • Octavia and Sombra having a song battle à la "The Devil Went Down to Georgia".
      • Flash Sentry asking Cranky why no likes him even though he had done nothing bad.
      • Two Royal Guard Ponies making Celestia & Luna impressions. One of which say "Everyday shell be cake day!".
      • A alternative ending in which an army of Changelings fly into Ponyville just before the credits.
  • Denial of Digital Distribution: Hasbro's unexpected renewal of their contract with Discovery Family, currently set to last until 2025, has resulted in the show being removed from streaming on Netflix worldwide, as well as Season 9 and Pony Life from Hulu.
  • Development Gag: Discord's name was originally going to be used for Nightmare Moon.
  • Diagnosis of God:
    • Zigzagged for Scootaloo and her inability to fly. When Lauren Faust was still the showrunner, she said that Scootaloo "hadn't figured it out yet" and was not disabled, then she said that she was disabled, then she stopped being the showrunner. While Scootaloo is seen with child-sized wings in "Growing Up is Hard to Do" as an adult, even that doesn't confirm that she's disabled as Bulk Biceps also has child-sized wings but can fly.
    • In 2023, Faust suggested that Pinkie Pie has ADHD, which she herself has.
  • DVD Commentary: Shout! Factory's Amazon exclusive Season 1 4-DVD set has audio commentaries on the episodes "Friendship is Magic, Part 1, "Friendship is Magic, Part 2", "Winter Wrap Up", "Suited For Success", "The Show Stoppers", and "The Best Night Ever", including people like Hasbro executives Brian Lenard and Robert Fewkes, supervising directors Jayson Thiessen and James "Wootie" Wootton, art director Ridd Sorensen, composer Daniel Ingram, and voice cast members such as Tabitha St. Germain, Andrea Libman, Cathy Weseluck, and Nicole Oliver.
  • Edited for Syndication: The Japanese dub unfortunately has to cut out a few scenes in order to make room for the longer intro and outro, as well as a locally-made live-action segment presented by Suzuko Mimori, leaving some scenes a bit out of place out of nowhere. It remains to be seen if any future DVD releases will restore these scenes, not having to worry about ad blocks.
  • Executive Meddling: Lauren Faust has said that Hasbro's management of the show has generally been fairly easy-going, and she's been allowed a lot more freedom than she expected, with some exceptions:
    • The overabundance of pink and hearts, particularly in the design of the toyline.
    • Making Celestia a princess instead of a queen.
    • Faust would have preferred to do a series with an overarching storyline but Hasbro wanted the episodes to be viewable in any order.
      • On the other hand, Faust says "a lot of fans now seem to think that I had a grand scheme for a big, dramatic, serialized magical-girl style of a show. Actually, it was always my intention to have the show partially 'adventure stories' and partially 'relationship stories,' as I called them in my initial pitch bible."
      • There weren't quite as many adventure stories in the first season as planned, but that was more budget restraints than Hasbro outright dictating it.
    • She also originally wanted the show's setting to be called Fillydelphia, since most of her family live in Philadelphia, but got Executive Vetoed. Fillydelphia ended up being mentioned as a separate town in "Swarm of the Century", "A Friend in Deed", "It's About Time", "Hurricane Fluttershy", and "Games Ponies Play" instead.
    • Hasbro requested the inclusion of specific characters, though notably not how to use them – only that they be in the show in some form. This is why Cheerilee became a teacher and got Happy Meal toys as part of the McDonald's promotions.
      • This also seems to apply to Shining Armor and Cadance, though in that case the wedding was also mandated.
    • She would have preferred to add a few more guy ponies for a better-rounded society.
    • Rarity's fashion focus came about due to Hasbro mandating that at least one of the mane cast had to be a fashion pony.
    • In season 2, she announced that she's only working as a consulting producer instead of an executive producer. She had zero involvement in Season 3 onwards.
    • After her speaking role in "The Last Roundup" brought her to full Ascended Meme status, it would appear that poor Derpy Hooves got hammered by this trope rather hard; the episode now has a new version that has been edited to change her voice, (mostly) "fix" her eyes, and remove reference to her name.
      • Because the above censorship row happened while episodes 53-65 were in production, Derpy has only a few appearances in Season 3. She's still in the intro, though, and also appeared in the finale 5 times.
    • Meghan McCarthy stated that one of the production notes for the season 4 finale was that she couldn't show Twilight punching Tirek in the face.
  • Fandom Nod:
    • The animation staff, The Hub and Hasbro are all too aware of the fandom's fondness of background ponies so Fandom Nods can be seen from time to time from the show itselfnote  to other branches of the MLP franchise such as advertisementsnote , official websitesnote  and merchandisenote .
    • A promo video referenced not only a Fan Community Nickname ("bronies"), but also a Fan Nickname for a minor character (DJ Pon-3).
    • Lyra Heartstrings and Bon Bon appear together in one scene in "Secret of My Excess" - Bon Bon even gives Lyra bedroom eyes.
      • And then, Derpy pops out of the well.
    • The officially licensed shirts are filled with these.
    • To "Good Ol' Days" by The Living Tombstone, in Inspiration Manifestation, when Rarity literally paved the streets of Ponyville in gold.
    • In Pinkie's book, a certain grey pegasus is depicted as a mailmare. Pinkie can't quite remember her name though...the books actually have a lot of these in them.
    • Lyra Heartstrings and Sweetie Drops:
      • They were placed next to each other on the Comic-Con 2011 poster/desktop background for a reason. They're even looking at each other gleefully.
      • The Funny Background Event that happened in the episode "Secret of My Excess" between Lyra Heartstrings and Sweetie Drops could be considered as this.
      • In "Putting Your Hoof Down", Sweetie Drops appears walking through the market wearing saddlebags with lyre-shaped buckles. She then joins a bored-looking Lyra Heartstrings at a table at the cafe.
      • The Season 2 promotional poster once again puts Lyra and Sweetie Drops together, Lyra giving the "camera" an enormous grin as Sweetie Drops looks on in confusion.
  • God Does Not Own This World: Lauren Faust, despite being the main creative force, has neither absolute control nor ownership of the franchise. This is punctuated by the fact that she demoted herself to consultant producer for Season 2, and then left the show entirely. She had to repeatedly inform curious fans that her statements and theories regarding Equestria no-longer qualify as Word of God, and that the show has diverged from her initial vision.
  • God Never Said That: Lauren Faust and company have been misquoted or misunderstood a few times. For example, it's a common belief that the show was pitched as much more Magical Girl adventure style but Hasbro demanded a more Slice of Life format. This isn't true, as Lauren has stated that she planned to have a mix of adventure and Slice of Life from the beginning. The reason why there aren't more adventure episodes is because they're harder to produce on a tight schedule while still being enjoyable.
  • He Also Did: Lauren Faust isn't the only animation veteran to have worked on the show.
  • Keep Circulating the Tapes: Due to pervasive censorship of the show's streaming rights worldwide in the past couple of years, as well as the show no longer airing in most countries, a lot of the non-English dubs are much harder to find compared to today.
  • Late Export for You:
    • As a whole, the show in Japan debuted 3 years after it started airing in the US. It was cancelled in 2014 after Season 2 had aired there, but it was eventually Un-Cancelled in August 2019 when Season 3 started airing in Japan just when the show was on its final season almost everywhere else!
    • In Croatia, the show initially debuted in 2014 on HRT (about 4 years after the first US broadcast) with just the first season, before airing the second season on the same channel about 3 years later in 2017. Around the same time, HRT began broadcasting the second season, another channel called RTL Kockica began airing a completely new dub - again starting off with only the first season - and later announced the third season in September 2019 that would air sometime later, just around the time of the series finale airing in the US.
  • Line to God:
  • Marth Debuted in "Smash Bros.": Japan was first officially introduced to the fourth generation of My Little Pony through the Gameloft game before the toys and the show.
    • Also, Friendship is Magic is actually the first My Little Pony show to be aired in Japan. Note that there was no My Little Pony Japanese dub before Friendship is Magic.
  • Meme Acknowledgment: Quite a lot of them, which is fitting given the show's extremely fan-friendly status.
    • This season 2 promo acknowledged the fan terms "brony" (term for fans of the show, usually defined as the older male ones) and "DJ Pon-3" (for the DJ pony seen in "Suited for Success").
    • May 30, 2012 saw the announcement of a special edition toy for Comic-con. The toy packaging is nameless, but contains a gray pegasus pony with blond hair, bubbles cutie mark, and yellow walled-eyes. The package is complete with muffins on the box art.
    • WeLoveFine's officially licensed My Little Pony line of shirts is at least half ascended memes.
    • A DVD box set featured a "Now 20% cooler!" sticker.
    • In "Pinkie Apple Pie", Apple Bloom does her version of Tara Strong's Ponylicious rap.
    • At BABSCon 2014 Peter New, the voice of Big Macintosh, made brony headlines by cosplaying Princess Big Mac.
      • Which also got a shout-out in the book series, in Applejack's story: the CMC were having a "Princess tea party" where they dress up as the four princesses of Equestria but they didn't have a Cadence so they got Big Mac to play with them. He's wearing a fake horn and wings when he finally comes in for dinner.
  • Newbie Boom: This happened in spades to the original My Little Pony fandom when My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic started to air. Previously, the fandom was a haven for mostly females (not that male fans didn't exist though) who loved the toys and fondly remembered the G1 cartoons. Then when Friendship Is Magic was introduced, the previous fandom was swamped by a huge influx of new, mostly male fans (dubbed "bronies"). Nowadays older fans have a tough time keeping their own pocket fandom afloat as G4 has utterly eclipsed the rest of the franchise into obscurity. Similarly, the brony fandom itself experienced a boom around Season 2, when the initial shock of "boys liking girl things" wore off for the most part and people began to check it out for the sake of the show itself.
  • No Export for You:
    • Of the worst kind, due to deals made with TV networks outside of the US. To date, the complete series has only been released for sale on the iTunes Store, which does not sell videos to those living in the remaining two-thirds of the world, and not even all of them are available outside the US in the one-third of the world where the iTunes Store sells videos. The show's other commercial digital releases (Netflix, Google Play, and YouTube) have all the episodes from past seasons, but as the trope suggests, they're known and/or presumed to be region-locked. Selected episodes have also been released on the Leap Frog App Center, but that's region-locked toonote  and only four pairs of episodesnote  are available.
      • As for DVDs, Edel Germany GmbH, InnoForm Media, and Madman Entertainment have released or are releasing Season 1 (and in Madman's case, Season 2) in their respective countries, Edel having released episodes 4-6 with only the German dub, InnoForm's DVDs putting the episodes Out of Order, and InnoForm & Madman's DVDs respectively being locked to Regions 3 & 4. However, aside from those, only "The Ticket Master" has been widely released (in some countries, only through limited-time promotions) on DVD outside the US (one or more countries have received multiple episodes), and those dubs are different from actual broadcast versions.
      • Those in Southeast Asia who can't get Boomerang, which has somehow obtained the rights to air parts of programming based on Hasbro's franchises almost everywhere outside North America, are screwed, since not all providers carry Boomerang. (For Southeast Asia, as of now, FIM is also on Cartoon Network) Nick Jr.? Only in Germany and Netherlands, though "A Canterlot Wedding – Part 1" can be watched for free with Spanish fansubs on a Mexican MLP website, and the German dub of the entire first season can be watched for free on Nickelodeon's German and Swiss websites. And naturally, all the videos on The Hub's website are region-locked to the USA, even the short clips (and proxies apparently don't work) – the videos on Hasbro's website may be viewable from outside the USA, but would require navigating to the US version of the Videos page. Made even worse that Boomerang was replaced by Toonami later on in the region.
    • Some parts of the Expanded Universe:
      • A French My Little Pony magazine published by Panini has printed at least two original stories, one of which has also been printed in their German magazine mentioned below.
      • A German My Little Pony magazine published by Panini has printed at least eleven original comics and at least four original stories, one of which has also been printed in their French magazine mentioned above.
      • A Hungarian My Little Pony magazine has printed at least one original story.
      • A Norwegian My Little Pony magazine published by Egmont has printed at least six original stories, two of which have also been printed in the Polish magazine mentioned below.
      • A Polish My Little Pony magazine has printed at least five original stories, two of which have also been printed in the Norwegian magazine mentioned above.
    • The long-awaited American releases of the Blind Bags skipped the second wave, jumping straight from the first to the third and moving forward from there. Not necessarily a bad thing, though, considering that Wave 2 had multiple instances of naming-fail.
    • For over two years, this was the case for Japan. Indeed, it was generally assumed that Japan would never get anything Pony-related due to Hasbro's likely inability to deal with stiff competition from the Hello Kitty and Pretty Cure franchises (and Japanese culture itself averting All Girls Like Poniesnote ). However, G4 toys are finally released and the show has aired in April 2013 thanks to Bushiroad.
      • For two years it looked like Japan wouldn't get anything past season 2, but as of 2015 the Japanese releases have begun again, starting with the Equestria Girls films, as well as both the Japanese Disney Channel and its sister channel Dlife once more airing the series in the country, at least starting with the first 2 season reruns.
    • The final season does not have Czech, Hungarian, Romanian or Serbian dubs, because Minimax publicly stated they would not be airing it for an unknown reason.
  • Out of Order:
    • The second season's eleventh through thirteenth episodes. "Hearth's Warming Eve", #13, was broadcast 11th so that it would air in time for Christmas (due to its similar theming). As a result, "Family Appreciation Day" and "Baby Cakes" were each bumped one slot later, #11 and #12 being broadcast 12th and 13th, respectively. Hasbro's website and My Little Pony YouTube channel, The Hub and its website, the iTunes Store, Google Play, and Netflix have all stuck with the production order's numbering, though the iTunes Store temporarily went with the broadcast order's numbering.
    • The third season's eighth through eleventh episodes. "Just for Sidekicks", #8, was broadcast 11th. As a result, "Apple Family Reunion", "Spike at Your Service" and "Keep Calm and Flutter On" were each bumped one scheduled slot earlier, #9, #10 and #11 being broadcast 8th, 9th and 10th, respectively.
    • Some non-U.S. broadcasts moved the second season finale two-parter "A Canterlot Wedding - Part 1" and "A Canterlot Wedding - Part 2" earlier in the season, presumably to hurry up and promote the Pony Wedding toys.
    • In spades for the Croatian RTL dub. It began with season 1, and a few years later the network announced season 3, completely skipping over season 2. Then, when new episodes finally began airing several months later, they were instead from seasons 4 and 5, skipping over season 3 as well and without an apparent explanation despite the fact it was previously announced.
  • Post-Script Season: Season 4 is this. Season 3 was originally intended to be the final season of the series (hence its shorter length), bringing it to a 65-Episode Cartoon and "Magical Mystery Cure" was originally written as the Grand Finale. Even in its final form, it does feel like a final episode but the series was greenlit for a fourth season so the episode was rewritten prior to production to fit into a three-episode arc that continues into the Season 4 premiere. In stark defiance to the fate of most series that fall under this trope, there are more episodes that take place after the Series Fauxnale than leading up to it! But thanks to the support of the massive Periphery Demographic of adult male fans, the series lasted another 6 seasons and proved that Post-Script Season isn't always a bad thing.
  • Promoted Fanboy:
    • Lauren Faust played with the G1 toys as a child. She even named her DeviantArt handle "fyre-flye" after her favorite G1 pony. (note that she did this before Hasbro asked her to do the show)
    • A few other staff members also have fond memories of the older shows. And a lot more became very fond of it in the work process.
    • Teddy Antonio, credited with writing the outline for "Keep Calm and Flutter On", is a brony, FIFTEEN YEARS-OLD at the time of his involvement.
    • Musician and MLP fan Andrew Stein, known to bronies as MandoPony, played mandolin for background score composer William Anderson on a cue apparently for the third Season Finale "Magical Mystery Cure", though said mandolin evidently didn't make it into the final score.
      • Ingram brought Mando back to play (and sing!) for Littlest Pet Shop (2012) (also produced by DHX Media). Mando has also since collaborated with Michelle Creber (and her parents) several times on musical projects.
    • Established fandubbers Kira Buckland and Brittany Lauda got to voice match the characters they often fan-voiced in the Power Ponies app.
    • Broadway actress Lena Hall, who in early 2014 revealed her love for the show after winning a Tony award, announced that she will be voicing a character in a Season 5 episode.
  • Reality Subtext: Pinkie Pie's middle name comes from M.A. Larson's aunt, Diane, when writing "Cutie Mark Chronicles".
  • Recursive Adaptation: Toys → animated series → toys. Hasbro is basing more and more G4 toys, blind bag ponies in particular, on the show. Lauren Faust based the show on her childhood idea of the G1 toys (as opposed to Hasbro's shallow animated versions) plus the names of several G3 ponies. So if you buy a Rainbow Dash toy today, you acquire a toy which is based on a character in My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic which in turn is Lauren Faust's interpretation of the G1 toy pony Firefly combined with the name and certain appearance details of the G3 pony Rainbow Dash.
  • Renamed to Avoid Association:
    • Starlight Glimmer was originally going to be named Aurora, but was renamed as Disney had a lock on the name Aurora from Sleeping Beauty and related properties.
    • Coco Pommel's name was shortened to just "Miss. Pommel" to avoid issues with the Chanel estate.
    • In the Japanese dub, Hummingway is called Hemingway, presumably to avoid copyright issues due to a character from Final Fantasy IV also named Hummingway.
  • Rule 34 – Creator Reactions: "I'm a big girl. When stuff gets too icky I just find something else to do."
    • Lauren eventually had to clarify this, insisting that fans please not remind her that Rule 34 Pony art exists.
    • Tara Strong jokingly posted this along with some other pictures of characters she's voiced on her Twitter, then later asked what Rule 34 and trolling was and said "Dear Princess Celestia, the Internet scares me". In October 2015, she teasingly posted a tweet admonishing fans for imagining all her characters naked and calling them sickos. Then again, she's been in the business long enough to see the trend, and she's known for having a quirky sense of humor on her twitter account, so who knows at this point.
      • It's pretty much confirmed at this point that Tara is totally trolling the bronies, and most of them know it too. The problem is the fans who take her seriously...
    • Corey Powell, one of the writers, apparently found Rule 34 of her dragon OC. Instead of being disgusted, she thought it was hilarious.
  • Running the Asylum: Lauren Faust has always been a My Little Pony fan, and she made sure that she got her way against almost all attempted Executive Meddling by Hasbro's higher-ups. So she didn't just run the asylum, she built it.
  • Same Voice Their Entire Life: The episode "The Perfect Pear" goes into detail on the Apple siblings' parents. In one scene, Bright McIntosh and Pear Butter are shown using the designs used for infants. However, their voices aren't remotely childish. They sound like full-grown adults in 1-year-old bodies.
  • Screwed by the Lawyers: Coco Pommel had to have her name changed to "Miss Pommel" after the Chanel estate sued Hasbro for trademark infringement. After her only major role with the new name in "The Saddle Row Review", the writers relegated her to background appearances.
  • Screwed by the Network:
    • With the rebrand of The Hub to Discovery Family in 2014, there was a nearly-year-long hiatus between the fourth and fifth season, in part because of production for My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Rainbow Rocks. The advertising for episodes was greatly diminished by the fifth season, yet the season premiere promo ran nonstop even after the premiere aired. The ratings tanked from last seasonnote , resulting in the season finale posting the lowest ratings ever for the series.
    • A relatively mild example is in Canada, where the show airs on Treehouse TV, a channel otherwise dedicated to pre-school programming. The airing times verge on the completely random.
    • In Singapore, it was broadcast on Okto weekdays at 12 PM, with absolutely no promos for it. On the flip side, season 2 was shown on Wednesdays and Thursdays at 6:30 PM, a primetime slot just one hour before Transformers: Prime.
    • It's screwed to the extreme by NTV7 in Malaysia. The show was supposed to premiere on March 3, 2012 on said channel, almost a year after it premiered in Singapore. It was yanked in the last minute and replaced with Lily the Witch. More egregiously is that the sting overlay still shows the airing show as My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic.
      • NTV 7 finally brought Season 1 in on July 5th, but at 8:30 AM and only one airing a week with no reruns. Season 2 and 3 are still up in the air as NTV7 wants to assess season 1's ratings before committing to later seasons according to Hasbro Malaysia. Unlike Singapore, no Pay TV providers in Malaysia carry Boomerang.
    • Some countries like Singapore and Brazil get the episodes Out of Order, with the Canterlot Wedding pushed forward to the middle of the season (before Hearth's Warming Eve), presumably because the toys for that episode were already out.
    • When the show was first shown on British TV it was put on Boomerang UK. The first thirteen episodes of Season 1 were shown on a endless loop two months after Season 1 ended as a whole in America, one episode a day apart from when they were running marathons of their more usual programming. In January 2012, (When season 2 was halfway though in America) they then started showing the second half of Season 1, marketing it as a new season, only for them to stop showing the show entirely after "The Best Night Ever". About a year or so later free to view children's channel Pop (Along with sister channels Pop Girl and Tiny Pop) stared airing the show without messing up the episode rotation, as well as showing the following seasons and the Equestria Girls films.
      • The DVD release for Season 1 in the UK still ended up shot to pieces. The original distributors released, to no strict schedule, five DVDs containing the 26 episodes - but in no real order. Then the distributor went bankrupt, and the show was picked up by another company, who released a Season 1 boxset - containing the five DVDs previously released with no change to running order.
    • New episodes of Season 2 were originally being aired on Saturday at 9 AM (''The Hub'' operates only on Eastern Time for most packages). They later pushed back to 10 AM, and then to 10:30 am for season 3.
    • HRT, the first channel to air the Croatian dub, not only placed the show in a terrible early timeslot (before 8 AM) and split each episode into two parts but also commissioned a bottom-of-the-barrel studio called "Novi Mediji" to dub it, resulting in the quality of the dub being exceptionally bad. The dub in question ended up being shown with poor voice casting, excerpts from the Serbian dubs and audio errors galore (such as various lines being randomly looped) which many Croatian viewers have shown disdain for. As of now, the Croatian dub is being done from scratch on a different channel and has only carried over the episode titles and intro lyrics.
    • In Germany, Viacom Europe gave the show to Nickelodeon, either without telling them what a big hit it was in North America with what a huge fan following or without knowing that themselves. In fact, they quite likely didn't even tell Nick that this was an all-new show that had next to nothing to do with what Germany knew as My Little Pony. So Nick expected mushy, sugary, girly, brain-dead stuff and parked one of the most successful animated series of the 2010s in their Nick Jr. pre-school block. They didn't advertise it anywhere outside the Nick Jr. block. During all kinds of school holidays, the show was pulled from the schedule, and otherwise, it only ran Mondays to Fridays as if to make sure that nobody would ever lay their eyes on it. In the meantime, Nick spent entire afternoons with rows of SpongeBob SquarePants re-runs. Recording it was out of question, too, because the schedule was so wonky that it was next to impossible to catch the episodes.
      To make matters worse, there were no announcements in TV magazines at all, and not a single TV magazine even printed the Nick Jr. block in detail. The same went for online TV news, most of which ignored the Nick Jr. block, too, and those that didn't announced the G3 show because they weren't told about a brand-new show either. The only places where one could find something like accurate announcements were Wunschliste.de, and even they got the information from a fan, and German brony Web sites.
      The result was that pretty much nobody in Germany — except for the bronies, that is, and a few collateral victims — ever found out about this show even when it had become a Cult Classic in North America and on the Internet. Explaining the bronydom was much harder than in North America because everyone still associated My Little Pony with either G1 or G3 — because nobody knew that there was a G4, much less a downright revolutionary new show. Add to that the fact that Animation Age Ghetto and Girl-Show Ghetto are both still alive and well in Germany.
      Worse yet, Nick, unaware of both Lauren's modifications to the franchise and the bronies, completely got the target audience wrong and expected it to be the same as the abomination that is G3.5 Newborn Cuties. This ruined the German dub for many, for at least the first season was dubbed Dora the Explorer-style, as if they were made for 3-year-olds. They got their act together by season 2 and even got Michael Pan, the German voice of Data, as Discord's German voice (the German voice of Q was unavailable due to his death, but believe it or not, Michael Pan hammed circles around John de Lancie), but the damage was done.
      To make things even worse, starting with season 4, the show was aired on the Disney Channel, so from then on, it had never been available on one single TV station again. Of course, the Disney Channel didn't know what to do with a "little girls' show" made by a competitor with abysmal ratings (which were so abysmal because Nick had never even tried) and stashed it away somewhere where nobody would watch it again. It's almost a wonder that the German bronydom grew so big with the only gateways being YouTube and gaming communities.
      One more minor thing: The first seasons all started in Germany almost exactly one year after North America. And then came My Little Pony: Equestria Girls which was to premiere everywhere in the world in an as short as possible timespan to coincide with the release of the new toy line. MLP:EG takes place immediately after the season 3 finale, but when it aired in Germany, season 3 hadn't even started, and what few people actually followed the show on TV were spoiled by Twilight suddenly being an alicorn.
    • My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is currently the only show owned by Hasbro that was removed from The Roku Channel in April 2022, and was also not made available on Tubi TV.
  • Serendipity Writes the Plot: In the Canadian live show, Rainbow Dash is mentioned to have hurt her wings, leaving her unable to fly.
  • Shipper on Set: Ashleigh Ball, the voice actress of Applejack and Rainbow Dash, is a fan of the AppleDash fan shipping, if these posts are any indication.
  • Shrug of God:
    • Lauren Faust likes to occasionally answer questions about the show in her DeviantArt comments page. Several times, though, she has refused to answer questions, saying that she has an idea of the answer, but doesn't want to tie herself down to any particular position when a different answer might come up later as a plot point, and sometimes the process of writing produces more interesting answers than trying to figure it out ahead of time. Other times, she's mentioned that she simply doesn't have an answer because it's not really something she goes out of her way to think about.
    Lauren: "We don't hammer logic that hard on this show."
    • Now that God Does Not Own This World, her responses have migrated to "My theory is X, but I don't know how the current show runners will handle that.".
  • Short Run in Peru: Any plans DHX, Discovery Family, and Hasbro had laid to air the seventh season have been utterly wrecked by TV channels outside the United States. Starting the week after the season premiere, Treehouse TV of Canada aired two episodes per weekend (one on Saturday and one on Sunday), resulting in them passing Discovery Family by the third week of the US run and ending on the eleventh episode's mid-season hiatus on May 21, while the Discovery Family would not reach this point until June 17. With the US having reached its mid-season hiatus on June 17, June 20 and 21st (which is a Tuesday and a Wednesday of all things) would see Boomerang Australia air the next two episodes, which weren't even thought to be produced, let alone distributed, at the time (hence the need for the mid-season hiatus). The rest of the season has also been subject to early releases and the like (such as "Daring Done?" being accidentally released on YouTube a week early instead of that week's episode).
    • Let's run it down, shall we? Episodes 5 through to 11 aired early in Canada. Episodes 12 and 13 aired early in Australia. Episode 18 was released accidentally on YouTube. Episode 20 aired early in Russia. Episode 22 was Canada again. Then, while episode 22 was airing in the US, news broke that the remaining four episodes, 23 to 26, were also leaked, on top of the fact that the movie leaked too. That makes 16 of the 26 episodes of the season that were available before they were supposed to be.
    • Four episodes into Season 8 it emerged that Treehouse TV were again going to be airing two episodes per weekend and would overtake the US airing after episode seven. This didn't come to pass...
    • But in the week after episode nine aired in the US, Finnish on-demand service Ruutu released the entire first half of the season, though in the Finnish language.
    • Then as fans prepared for the second half of the season at the beginning of August, once again Boomerang in Australia took the lead, and like Treehouse TV in Season 7, began airing two episodes a weekend.
    • And then it went From Bad to Worse. At the beginning of August, it was discovered that now Sweden was going to release episodes early too. France didn't bother with any pretext and dumped all episodes up to 21 onto an on-demand service at the same time in the middle of August, with the later episodes over a month before the Discovery Family airing.
      • Then Denmark joined in the fun by airing the remaining episodes one-a-day, finishing the season before August was out, the finale episodes airing a full two months before their scheduled airdate in the US. Counting the pre-season leaks, less than 6 episodes of the 26-episode season were first premiered on Discovery Family at the correct time.
    • Season 9 has similarly been destroyed. The first 7 episodes premiered in the US first, but then Italy began to air episodes early. At first only episodes 8 to 13 had been aired early. Then, Chinese streaming service Youku began airing episodes left and right. They finally stopped at Daring Doubt, the 21st episode of the season. It only got worse when Dutch streaming service Videoland released all of season 9, including the finale. The second half of the season was taken down quickly, but it ended up airing early on Dutch TV anyway. Then, a hack led to the episodes being released early. As a final kick in the teeth, the finale aired on Ukrainian channel Plus Plus and released to Polish streaming service nc +GO on September 25, 2019, a full 17 days before it aired on American television.
  • Similarly Named Works:
    • My Little Pony Friendship is Magic: Adventures in Ponyville is the title of both a game and a DVD.
    • My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic is both the title of the show and the title of a Novelization of the pilot episodes of the show.
    • The Magic of Friendship Storybook, the book The Magic of Frienship [sic] and the Sparkle World story The Magic of Friendship have very similar titles (two of which would be exactly the same if not for a Tyop on the Cover of one of them).
    • The DVD Celebration at Canterlot and the toy set Celebration at Canterlot Castle have very similar titles. This was most likely intentional, as they're both part of the Target-exclusive Canterlot set of merchandise.
  • Teasing Creator: Tara Strong (voice of Twilight) claimed that Twilight's "deep dark secret" is her crush on Pinkie Pie when asked at the MLP Panel at San Diego Comic Con 2018.
  • Throw It In!:
    • Derpy Hooves (see Ascended Fanon) was only cross-eyed in her first appearance because of an animation mistake (or an intentional gag). She had normal eyes for her next few appearances, until the team heard about the popularity of the cross-eyed Derpy and decided to keep her that way.
    • Sweetie Belle's iconic voice cracks from the first three seasons were never planned. Claire Corlett said she couldn't control them because they just happened.
    • Lending to its realistically unpracticed and stumbling delivery, the Cloudsdale anthem as performed by Spike in Equestria Games was genuine improvisation on Cathy Weseluck's part.
    • The background animators constantly throw in unscripted references to other works that are mostly inappropriate for the series' primary Fleeting Demographic, like The Slender Man Mythos in "Pinkie Apple Pie", background ponies resembling the Lutece Twins in "Trade Ya!" and a delegate resembling Dr. Steve Brule in "Princess Spike".
  • Trolling Creator: Meghan McCarthy isn't above stirring the pot on Twitter, such as teasing fans with claims that Pinkie will become a Princess.
  • Un-Canceled: The Japanese version stopped airing on TV Tokyo due to low ratings in 2014. It was later picked up by Disney Channel Japan in 2018 and started airing Season 3 in August 2019.
  • Unfinished Episode: According to Lauren Faust, there was going to be an episode where Applejack and Rainbow Dash stumble upon a pony who belonged to a deer family, hence thinking they were a deer; the focus of the episode was whether or not the girls should tell them about his true self or just let him be who he wants.
  • Word of Gay: Mike Vogel tweeted during "Slice of Life", referring to Steven Magnet as a "gay dragon". He also confirmed that King Sombra is bisexual.
  • Word of God:
  • Write What You Know:
    • Twilight Sparkle's personality is based on that of Lauren Faust's mother, as well as girls she knew in school who were high academic achievers but didn't act like stereotypical nerds. Lauren also says Fluttershy is based on herself as a child.
    • Meghan McCarthy said at the Canterlot Gardens convention that the reason many ponies go a little crazy in the episodes she writes is because they were mostly composed in the wee hours of the morning as she grappled with deadlines, the ponies' stress reflecting her own.
  • Writer Conflicts with Canon: Several writers have given their own ideas on the show's canon, but they acknowledge that these are semi-canonical at best and the only true canon is what is shown in-series:
    • Word of God has stated that, if Nightmare Moon had won in the series premier, then her eternal night would have resulted in all plants and animals dying. Yet the season 5 finale "The Cutie Re-Mark" shows a Bad Future where Nightmare Moon did win, and where the night lasts forever, yet there are still plants and ponies alive.
    • According to Lauren Faust the reason for Luna's season one design (or "Woona" as fans call her) was that she lacked most of her magic. She has said it was an on-the-spot explanation and that the writers could explain it some other way. Thus far, no writer has tried to. The IDW comics have randomly used her original design at different points, Luna has been depowered yet still retains her post-pilot design, and flashbacks in the cartoon itself show that Luna had an ethereal mane a thousand years ago. It's been shown that extremely powerful unicorns can have ethereal manes, implying it's a power-related thing, however this hasn't been directly clarified in canon.
    • In season 1, one of the writers stated that all hooved animals were Civilized Animals. The show itself hasn't seemed to take note of this. While the IDW comics featured sentient deer and there were once plans for an episode featuring deer, the show itself ultimately presents them as just another animal. Pigs and giraffes are also Nearly Normal Animals as well. In the show the rule seems to be less "all hooved animals, and several mythological creatures, are sentient" and more "all equine, and several mythological creatures, are sentient".
    • Faust has stated that, in her opinion, Celestia raised Spike growing up, not Twilight. She however said this after resigning from the show and notes that it is thus little more than a semi-official headcanon. The show hasn't clarified Spike's backstory yet however it has never presented Celestia's bond with Spike as mother/son.
    • Lauren Faust has suggested that Luna is still growing and is physically a teenager. The series itself treats Luna as a full-grown adult.

    Toyline 
  • Early Draft Tie-In:
    • One of the early books refers to Luna by her original name "Selena".
    • Many pieces of merchandising used artworks based on concept art, with some design differences such as pegasi having 5 visible feathers in each wing instead of 4, every pony having visible eyelashes on the bottom of their eyes rather than only on top and Sweetie Belle having oval-shaped eyes rather than round. The limited edition glow in the dark Zecora figure released in 2013 takes the crown, since the artwork on her box is literally a colored version of one of Lauren Faust's first sketches for the character which had narrower head and eyes than the definitive model.
  • Kids' Meal Toy: During its run, it was a very popular 'girl toy' at McDonald's, usually featuring plastic ponies with brushable tails. It was also featured at Burger King a few times.
  • The Merch: A set of trading cards by Enterplay, lots of shirts and other merchandise by Mighty Fine (sold through their own online store WeLoveFine as well as by Hot Topic and 80sTees.com), Zazzle, and FashionPlaytes, as well as a few necklaces by Onch Movement. Much of Enterplay and Mighty Fine's merch is Official Fan-Submitted Content.
  • Regional Bonus: Toy examples:
    • Canadian So Soft talking dolls (at least So Soft Newborn Rainbow Dash) can speak English or French. The Canadian version of the talking Princess Cadance toy likely can as well, judging by its packaging being bilingual.
    • There are several European special editions with often-exclusive bonus contents, the most prominent of the exclusive bonus contents being brushable non-Glimmer Wings Daisy Dreams with her cutie mark on her right flank (in a 1 + 1 pack with brushable Fluttershy), brushable Rainbow Flash (in a 1 + 1 pack with brushable Rainbow Dash), brushable Skywishes (in the ride along brushable Rainbow Dash set), brushable Star Swirl (in the Rarity's Royal Gem Carriage set), and the orange carriage and purple squirrel (in the Rarity's Carousel Boutique set).
  • Show Accuracy/Toy Accuracy:
    • Most toys of Applejack don't include her hat, presumably because it'd be an extra accessory. The ones that do make her hat light blue or pink instead of brown.
    • Early toy versions of Princess Celestia were made more vividly pink than she is in the show (where she's pale enough to effectively be white) in order to be more appealing to girls, even though the packaging used accurately colored show renders. This practice stopped around the time the more obviously pink Princess Cadence was introduced in the show, which allowed for the coexistence of show-accurate Celestia toys and pink princess toys.
    • Princess Luna toys tend to be purple-hued instead of dark blue and black.
    • Most of the ponies that come with an animal pet don't have the same pets as seen in the show. With the introduction of the Explore Equestria and the Equestria Girls Minis, they now have their pets from the show. Rainbow Dash comes with Tank in an Explore Equestria set, and all of the Equestria Girls Minis Slumber Party dolls have the pets from the show (sans Rainbow, who's absent from that toyline). While Owlowiscious did not get packaged with a solo Twilight toy, he was included in the Nightmare Night wave of the Friendship is Magic Collection with Twilight's treehouse.
    • Early toys of Spike have him permanently posed on all fours; while he does stand like this in the show on occasion, most of the time he stands and walks like a biped. However, later Spike toys do have him standing on his hind legs.
    • Some of the ponies introduced in the toy line are recolors of the Mane Six, while the recolored artwork that appears on the package doesn't match the character the toy was based on. For instance, Blossomforth's toy is a recolored Fluttershy, but the package artwork is derived from a render of Rainbow Dash. If these ponies end up making the jump to the show, their appearances are usually altered so they look less like any given member of the Mane Six (like Blossomforth having an eye color and mane style change). As later toylines have fewer ponies that didn't originate in the show proper, the practice of toy recolors being altered in some way for the cartoon has conseuently died away.
    • Conversely, for a very long time there were no toys of many of the background ponies who frequently appear on the show—including no male ponies whatsoever. The eventual stock of male ponies are nearly all Palette Swaps of Big Macintosh (for Earth ponies) or Shining Armor (for unicorns) and Thunderlane (for pegasi), which makes the background stallions larger than they are in the show.
    • Early blind bag toy ponies included some instances of major and frequently-recurring characters being represented as recolors of other toy molds, such as Fluttershy, Cheerilee, and Trixie Lulamoon being recolors of Rainbow Dash, Applejack, and Rarity. As more characters have gotten unique molds, however, this practice has become less common.
    • Twilight Sparkle, Rainbow Dash, and Applejack toys tend to have much longer manes than they do in the show.
    • The Friendship Express Train and its Nursery Train Car are less like their toys in the opening during "Lesson Zero" and "Luna Eclipsed". However, "Sisterhooves Social" introduced an updated version of the opening that has them be more like their toys (and subsequent episodes of the show proper). But the Friendship Express toys are now exactly how the train is on the show
  • Spoiled by the Merchandise:

    Fandom 
  • Approval of God:
    • Hasbro and/or The Hub have sent official material to popular fansites Equestria Daily and Ponychan, including exclusive interviews with the show's creative staff. Everfree Radio, a project that started on Equestria Daily, regularly gets clearances to conduct surprisingly lengthy interviews of the show's actors, animators, composers, and writers.
    • At the 2015 San Diego Comic Con panel, the actors and creators asked what their favourite fan ships were. Most of them claimed not to have any, but Ashleigh Ball claimed to really like Appledash. For World Pride Day the previous year, she posted some Appledash fanart that she had signed personally.
    • Big Macintonsh's voice actor, Peter New, approved of a comic depicting Big Mac as a transgender woman.
  • Ascended Fanon:
    • Lauren Faust, as a Promoted Fangirl, listened to the fans very hard, to the point of canonizing Unicorn Pegasi (On the other hand, since the only winged unicorns we've seen thus far are God-Tier, a lot of Pony-sonas just got a whole lot more Sue-y).
    • She also listens to the fanbase when it comes to which background characters become Ensemble Darkponies, and we're gradually seeing this bear fruit. For instance, Derpy Hooves has been officially canonized, being included in episode storyboards as a Where's Waldo-style challenge in season 1 ("Derpy" is even her canon name according to some Season 2 concept art) and getting lines, a ditzy personality and even being called "Derpy" by Rainbow Dash in S2's The Last Roundup.
    • In a larger sense, the entire Friendship is Magic series is an ascension of the fanon Lauren Faust created for her My Little Pony toys when she played with them as a child.
    • While it's unknown if it was intended to be so before the fandom reaction, Luna's characterization as The Atoner seeking to make up for her actions as Nightmare Moon was probably one of the most common fanon interpretations of her character.
    • Derpy Hooves' name and personality, all extrapolated from an animation glitch in the first episode, ended up getting added to canon late in the show's run.
    • As the pegasus Derpy is treated as the mother of the unicorn Dinky in fanon, fans tried to explain how that's possible; theories ranged from the father being a unicorn to it being in their DNA — complete with detailed Punnet Squares to justify it. "Baby Cakes" revealed that the Cakes' new baby twin foals, a unicorn and a pegasus, got those traits from their parents' other family members.
      Mr. Cake: That makes sense, right?
    • In "Magic Duel", alicorn becomes the canon term for a Winged Unicorn. Possibly.note  "Magical Mystery Cure" uses the term unambiguously, as Rarity refers to Twilight as an alicorn, and the show continues to do so afterwards. Lauren Faust had previously used the term in interviews.
    • All There in the Script names from the toy line include Cherry Berry, Lotus Blossom, Lyra Heartstrings, and Sunny Rays. A mid-2017 update to Gameloft game likewise formalized Button Mash's name. Of course, most of the ascended Fan Nicknames are generic enough that they could just be cases of I Knew It!, and the name "Cherry Berry" had previously been used as the British name of the G1 pony Crunch Berry. The same can't be said for the YouTube-born Steven Magnet.
    • The Equestrivia Challenge game on the Hub website uses the fan names in several questions, such as Lyra Heartstrings, DJ-Pon3, Aloe and Lotus Blossom, and more. Derpy and Doctor Whooves even stand next to each other on the congratulations screen.
    • Doctor Whooves is an interesting case as, in the recently released official guidebook entitled The Elements of Harmony, he is referred to by that name, yet other sources seem to indicate his name in-universe is Time Turner. Curiously, Derpy goes entirely unnamed in the book.
    • The idea of remnants of Nightmare Moon taking corporeal form has been explored in Past Sins. While the origin of the remnants is different, a similar idea has been introduced in the form of the Pony of Shadows in "Castle Mane-ia".
    • The Enterplay trading card set makes many fanon ideas official, including Octavia and her friendship/rivalry with DJ Pon-3 (see Ascended Meme below), the name of Mayor Mare, and Time Turner being in charge of "all things timey-wimey."
    • Although Derpy's name being spoken in "The Last Roundup" got Orwellian Retconned out for being controversial, the Comic-Con exclusive Derpy toy shows pictures of muffins on the box instead of printing her name.
      • So does the official box set with Thunderlane, Rainbowfied Fluttershy and (picture of muffin) on Amazon here. Amazon refers to her as Derpy, but the box itself just shows a muffin.
    • Due to YouTube's subtitle "Blind Idiot" Translation errors, the Sea Serpent in Friendship Is Magic Part 2 was christened Steven Magnet by the fans. Two years later, Hasbro releases toys of the sea serpent and the manticore from the same episode, naming them officially. The manticore was named Manny Roar, and guess what the sea serpent was named.
    • A number of fanon names for background characters have ascended thanks to the Enterplay trading cards, Gameloft video game, and toys. Notably, DJ Pon-3, Octavia, Lyra, Lotus Blossom, and Nurse Redheart have all appeared in toy form under their fanon names.
    • Twilights Kingdom Part 1:
      • Ever since it was first mentioned in "It's About Time", Tartarus became subject to fan fics about one (if not all) of the monsters imprisoned there breaking free. In the episodenote , our villain does just that.Thanks, M.A. Larson!.
      • Fans have been calling for Tirek to be brought into G4 continuity for a long time, and fanart and fanfics featuring him are plentiful. Now their wish has been granted.
      • Earth Ponies being stronger than the other two tribes was a piece of fanon so common that it was near-universally accepted. It helps that it was established by Word of God or at least Word of Dante, and there have always been things such as only earth ponies plowing snow in Winter Wrap Up, or Cheerilee and Ms. Peachbottom's epic Juggernaut moments in Hearts and Hooves Day and Games Ponies Play, respectively, and Big Mac and Maud's Running Gag of insane Super-Strength. It was up to fans whether to take those moments as proof of earth ponies being stronger as a trait of the race, or as the pegasi and unicorns having other jobs in the first case and Rule of Funny in all those others, but now Celestia confirms this as canon when she mentions that "without their strength" (drained by Tirek), they would not be able to tend the land.
  • Defictionalization: The fanmade ones (for the official ones, see this trope's listing in the Staff and Production folder):
  • Fan Community Nicknames:
    • Fans who are older than the target demographic are known as "bronies."
    • Many female fans call themselves "pegasisters". While other female fans dislike the term and prefer to just be "bronies", considering it gender-neutral. Another term is "bronette", nowhere near as popular as "brony" or "pegasister".
  • Fandom Life Cycle: You can make an argument for every stage from 4 on.
    • Stage 4 "large and organized," without a doubt. Sites like Equestria Daily and Fimfiction.net are still running strong, and fan artists are still making things left and right.
    • Stage 5 (sufficiently ingrained in contemporary culture for even the people not familiar with it to know a lot about it). The fanbase has been referenced on Saturday Night Live (not positively, mind you, but then no "nerdy" thing ever is), The Colbert Report, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and so on, and the general populace are aware that bronies exist. Andy Price, one of the comic artists, makes an argument that MLP is still in this stage in a "Fandom Files" podcast.
    • Stage 6: While 2012-2015 is largely considered to be the "golden age", with 2015 being the year in which convention attendance and fan activity was the highest, it is hard to deny that the fandom as a whole has changed. Whether that be for better or for worse remains to be seen, but there are arguments for a Stage 6 existence. Many would argue that the fandom started to decline while the show was still running, with many bronies during this period "losing the spark" and leaving the fandom. Soon, several conventions began closing their doors permanently (including flagship con BronyCon, closing in 2019), a sign that representation was dwindling. By the time the show actually ended in 2019, the Brony fandom was already a shell of its former self, with many remaining fans jumping ship to Generation 5 with the 2021 release of the movie My Little Pony: A New Generation (which led to a brief albeit notable resurgence in the fandom). While G4 continues to attract new fans, the Brony fandom as a whole currently has nowhere near the relevance that it had during its heyday.

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