Trivia / My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (IDW)

• Ascended Fanon: The bronies have frequently depicted Trixie as at least having the same potential as Twilight, but being held back by her hubris. Reflections implies this is indeed the case, as Mirror Universe Trixie is an Alicorn.
• Ascended Meme: Issue #13 ends with Twilight, Pinkie, Rainbow, and Rarity facing against a giant ghost crab. "Rarity fighting a giant crab" has been a meme in the fanbase for some time, its origins itself pretty much out of the blue. (Someone asked to have artwork of Rarity fighting a crab, and these simply haven't stopped coming). Funny enough, Rarity doesn't really contribute to the crab fight.^note She does hold her own in a sword fight with Hoofbeard, so she's still awesome
• Blooper:
  • Andy Price seems to have started a habit of forgetting pegasus wings. Funny enough this is a common animation error in the show. Honest mistakes or accuracy to the source material? You decide.
  • First issue, if you think "She'll get rid of them right quick!" is an odd thing for Rainbow Dash to say, this is because Heather Breckel accidentally gave Applejack RD's color scheme (the panel only shows a little bit of her face so it was probably an easy mistake).
  • In Issue 34, Fluttershy is shown helping Applejack tie up Flim and Flam, but in the next panel she's shown accompanying Rainbow Dash.
• Executive Meddling: Princess Celestia was originally drawn as younger and actually kissing Mirror Sombra in the flashbacks for "Reflections", but higher ups orders it changed (despite Princess Cadance and Shining Armor kissing in "A Canterlot Wedding").
• Exiled from Continuity:
  • Fanmade characters are not allowed to even cameo in the comic. While this would usually elicit a "well duh" remark, this example actually stems from inserting a fanmade pony from the well-known anti-brony artist a background character for the comics' 2014 annual. It didn't help that writer Anderson attempted to justify this decision by expressing support for the artist's social views on various MLP fan forums, creating a massive backlash.
  • Also, it's not a part of the new Hasbro Comic Universe, and hence won't be showing up in Revolution, both because of "tone issues" and, well, they'd need to somehow explain where any MLP characters came from. (The Editor in charge has said that things could change, though.) Jem and the Holograms (IDW) is absent too, but they are considered to be a part of the universe.
• Fandom Nod:
  • In issue #8, Pinkie uses the term "pegasister" to refer to her friends. The fandom has used "pegasisters" to some degree to describe the female adult fans akin to the word "brony".
  • In Issue #18, when the Mane 6 are attacked by the evil Celestia and Luna in the mirror universe, Rarity accuses Luna's choice of red and black colors for her armor sarcastically "original". In the fandom, there are a lot of fan's original character ponies using similar red and black (especially on alicorn characters), making the color scheme completely unoriginal and a joke that such colors are a part of Donut Steel (original characters made with "Do Not Steal" warnings despite no one wanting to steal them).
  • Some of the gags, especially ones involving background ponies (see Wolverine Publicity below) or recreating popular moments from the show.
  • Issue #25 has Spike going to a Star Pony convention in Los Pegasus, a reference to the infamous Los Pegasus Unicon.
  • One of Sweetcream Scoops' flirting-with-Big-Macintosh moments (top right) has her with the exact pose and expression as ponies from the 'wet mane' meme. All she needs is, well, a wet mane.
• Limited Special Collector's Ultimate Edition: Issue #1's joint Larry's & Jetpack variant Cover RE◊, which uses the connected rough design production artwork of the Larry's Comics variant Cover RE◊ and the Jetpack Comics variant Cover RE◊, will have only 125 copies printed. The Jetpack variant itself will be limited to only 750 copies. To commemorate the comic selling 1 million copies, a special cover for issue #12 was made. Only 12 copies of the cover will be made.
• Line to God:
  • Artist Andy Price has a DeviantArt page and a Twitter account.
  • Writer Katie Cook has a DeviantArt page and a Twitter account.
  • Artist Amy Mebberson has a DeviantArt page and a Twitter page
  • Artist Brenda Hickey (whose work includes the main series My little Pirate: Friendship Ahoy arc and Applejack's micro issue) has a DeviantArt page, a Twitter account and a Tumblr blog.
  • Artist Tony Fleecs (who does a lot of the variant covers and worked on the micro series) has a DeviantArt page.
  • Writer Heather Nuhfer has a Twitter page
  • Editor Bobby Curnow has an IDW Publishing Forum thread specifically for asking him questions. Colorist Heather Breckel also frequently posts on the forum.
• Playing Against Type: Or rather, Drawing Against Type. J. Scott Campbell, best known for his work on Danger Girl, Gen¹³, and, well, drawing sexy comic and fantasy girls in general, did a variant cover◊ for Issue #3. While he's an '80s fan and has drawn cartoon characters before, its kinda funny to look at his deviantArt gallery and think that someone asked him to draw ponies.
• Promoted Bronies/Running the Asylum:
  • Both Andy Price and Katie Cook had plenty of G4 fanart on their DeviantArt pages before the series was announced, and Katie has said she was a fan of the original G1 series. This leads to such things as Derpy being featured prominently and being fond of muffins, “flank” being used as a synonym for “butt”, several G1 references, etc.
  • Amy Mebberson, Heather Nuhfer, and Heather Breckel were also all big fans before working on the comic. Pretty much everyone involved is a brony/pegasister!
• Recycled Script: The plot of the 2014 Holiday Special is essentially "Ponyville Confidential" with Sunset Shimmer added in.
• Release Date Change: Due to the COVID-19 Pandemic, Diamond Comic Distributors (the company that ships comics from IDW and other major publishers to retail shops all over the US) temporarily shut down operations. As a result, all comics with street dates on or after April 1, 2020 (including #89) have been put on hold. The comics resumed production with Issue #89 releasing August 12, 2020.
• Schedule Slip: Not to extreme extents, but each issue of the first Story Arc have had to be delayed from their original scheduled release date. The first issue due to demand for the comics far exceeding expectations, the second (with a bunch of other IDW comics) due to a union strike, and the last two due to customs inspections.^note IDW comics are printed overseas
• Sequel in Another Medium: Serves as this to the show, following up on events between the Grand Finale and the Distant Finale.
• Shown Their Work: The St. Patrick's Day themed Hot-Topic variant cover of Issue 4◊ has Lyra in a pony version of an appropriate Irish stepdance dress.
• Trolling Creator: Artist Andy Price has been known to hide trolling messages in panel backgrounds. In one issue, Twilight had a series of conspiracy theory pages pinned to a wall containing various words. When deciphered, they said "If you are reading this, you have too much free time."
• What Could Have Been:
  • Andy Price originally wanted everything to be hand-done, including the interior colors, similar to how his covers are done. That would have taken far too much time, however, so the interiors are digitally colored.
  • On page 3 of Issue #1, there was originally going to be a pony version of Sergio Aragonés among the No Celebrities Were Harmed ponies at the moustache kiosk, but Andy Price ran out of room.
  • Unfinished versions of page 3 of Issue #1 had the pony partly under a 100-pound weight use Symbol Swearing instead of saying "OUCH!"
  • Thom Zahler (creator of Love and Capes and also did the Twilight Sparkle spotlight issue) seriously pitched My Little Pony for IDW's Mars Attacks! Cross Through event. The plot would involve Princess Celestia casting a spell to disable the Martians' weapons (preventing the Martians from horribly killing the Ponies), causing them to find hilarious new ways to attack the ponies only to fail and eventually learn the magic of friendship. The Martians would return to their own dimension to spread love & tolerance, only to confuse their fellow Martians that didn't visit Equestria. Alas, the Cross Through came and went, and no ponies... ^note The crossover was scrapped due to fears from the Moral Guardians had over the possibility of the Martians brutally killing beloved kids characters much like what happened with Hasbro's other beloved property The Transformers which Hasbro got cold feet, the only remnant of the idea was a Shout-Out in a Mars Attacks! issue cover that showed a Martian in a mech suit chasing after a humanized Applejack.
  • Lauren Faust had the idea to make the Nightmare Arc (issues 5-8) a plot in the animated series, but she left before it could be implemented.
  • Jeremy Whitley, before writing the script for Friends Forever #2, had an original idea of recreating ''DaysOfThunder'' in Equestria, but was stymied by the limits for technology and thus lack of cars.
  • Artist Brenda Hickey had original named Jewel as Coralita, and has a design similar to the ponies. Hasbro asked for the design to be made more in line with Under the Sparkling Sea, and changed her name to Jewel to avoid the existing name Coral from the book.
  • Ted Anderson for the 2013 Annual special had originally written in AJ's Aunt and Uncle Orange as her "antagonists" in the story. However, the issue rose up of how to explain her aunt and uncle only being a year or two older; as such, these were changed to Babs Seed and Sunflower, but requiring the in-universe age-up to make them work. Anderson also had originally had Zecora as the homeroom teacher before changing it to Ms. Harshwhinney.
  • The cats in Issue #24 were going to have cutie marks on their foreheads and more direct coloring matches to the Mane 6 as to emphasize the connection more between them and the ponies; according to Hickey, Hasbro nixed this approach, but still allowed for enough of the Mane 6 coloring and other style to show through to make the joke obvious. One panel in the final version has Scootaloo feeling at her forehead as where the cutie marks would have been, which Hickey left in, feeling it would still be apparent what the connection was.
  • Apparently a lot of stuff for "Siege of the Crystal Empire" was changed due to heavy Executive Meddling.
  • A crossover with Transformers was planned but canceled. But then it happened.
  • According to Jeremy Whitley, because of the series ending at the 102nd mark, this resulted in the stories involving the Trees of Harmony in the other lands lasting only 1-2 issues instead of being longer as originally planned due to the lack of available issues, with the Farasian one being the exception due to it being the first meaning that there wasn't a stopping point mandated at that time.