Web Video / Scootertrix the Abridged

"Once upon a time, in the magical land of Equestria there were two regal princesses who ruled all. The older princess was so powerful that she could raise and lower the sun! The other one, uh, kinda sucked."

Scootertrix the Abridged is an Abridged Series of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic created by Jack Getschman.

The series follows the episodic structure of MLP closely, with one ten-minute episode for each episode of the show's first season in its original airing order. However, the overarching plot gradually diverges from that of the canon show, gearing toward a wartime story.

Equestria's Mundane Fantastic setting is mostly played straight, which gives the series plenty of ammunition for parody and deconstruction of the show's inconsistencies and fairytale aspects. Like many Abridged Series, it also plays with the Fourth Wall, making it an integral part of the world's workings.

As a late contender on the MLP Abridged scene, the series makes itself unique by not parodying just the original show but by also referencing already existing abridged series and subverting common tropes.

There was also a Crossover (with another MLP abridged series, Friendship Is for Adults) titled "Scootertrix Is for Adults". This crossover led to the spin-off series Royal Correspondence, which focuses on the Princesses of both universes.

After a full season corresponding to the original show's Season One, plus several bonus episodes and a Movie, Scootertrix the Abridged came to a definitive end with Episode 26. But Getschman couldn't stay away from this universe for good, and is now releasing a follow-up series titled Scootertrix the Epilogue, as well as short clips based on the Gen 1 cartoons.

You can watch the whole series on YouTube here.

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This Abridged Series contains the following tropes:

A-M

• Aborted Arc:
  • Applejack calls The Bird "Sally" in episode 3. Twilight comments on this, but it never gets brought up again. This was supposed to be the start of a Running Gag where AJ constantly got others' names wrong when she wasn't using nicknames. Getschman dropped the joke because he thought it would interfere with some later scenes.
  • Early episodes have an odd gag where others would compliment Rarity on her generosity. Or Rarity would call someone else generous, then a Sting would play while the camera zoomed in on Rarity's face. Then the joke just stops. Getschman doesn't even remember what that running gag was supposed to be leading up to. Despite that, it does make a return in the series finale.
  • Up to episode 14, fourth wall awareness was only associated with villains... and Pinkie Pie. Trixie even called the Fourth a dark, evil power. At the time, this was supposed to foreshadow that Pinkie was Evil All Along. But Getschman decided Pinkie had evolved too much for that twist to work anymore, and wrote her a completely different arc for the rest of the series.
  • The Grand Galloping Gala. The tickets and invitations to the Gala are the main focus of Episode 3, then Twilight buys a dress for the Gala in Episode 14, then... nothing. Episode 26, the one that corresponds to the Gala episode from the original series, doesn't include any footage from that episode. (It would make in-universe sense if the Gala was cancelled on account of the war, but that's never specified.)
• Accent Slip-Up: A changeling in disguise as a pony (specifically Kyle, disguised as Fluttershy in episode 20) accidentally cries out in his normal voice when he trips and falls on his face.
• Accidental Misnaming:
  • Twilight mispronounces Tirek as "Tie-reek".
  • She also can't remember the Spear of Nidhogg's name, and keeps calling it "the Noghod Spear".
• The Ace: Flash Sentry never appears on-screen (in the main series at least), but is described by everyone as the shining star of the military academy, and has won every battle he's fought.
• Achievements in Ignorance: In The Movie, the version of Rainbow Dash from Ultra Fast Pony can cross into other universes with no outside help. No one knows how she can do it, especially not Rainbow Dash. As the other UFP ponies point out, this is hardly the first time Rainbow's broken the laws of magic or physics through sheer stupidity.
• Acme Products: In episode 15, Twilight uses an "ACME Lie Detector" on Pinkie.
• Adaptational Badass: In the show, Flash Sentry was just a love interest for Twilight Sparkle in the Equestria Girls movies. Here, however, he's an ace commander, tactical genius, and military hero who has never lost a single battle. Apple Bloom considers him her rival due to him constantly one-upping her progress.
• Adaptational Early Appearance: Even though Scootertrix's source material is the first season of Friendship is Magic, characters and locations from later seasons of the original canon are already affecting the plot (many of them from off-screen). King Sombra meddles with Celestia's dreams in episode 8. Queen Chrysalis, the changelings, and the Crystal Empire are discussed in episode 9. Discord, in his petrified form, shows up in episode 15. Flash Sentry wins a major victory for Equestria in episode 18. Lord Tirek tries to invade Equestria in between episodes 22 and 23. Cadance and Shining Armor show up as figures on a stained glass window in episode 3, then appear in person in episode 26. Starlight Glimmer and the rest of her village show up in the cold open of episode 26.
• Adaptational Explanation: In "The Ticket Master", there was no explanation for why Princess Celestia sent only two Gala tickets to Twilight, despite knowing that Twi had six friends who would potentially want to go. In the Scootertrix version of the episode, Celestia plans from the start to send tickets for all the Elements of Harmony—but only manages to send out Twilight's invitation before getting distracted by a conversation with Luna.
• Adaptational Heroism: Lightning Dust was a selfish daredevil in the original cartoon, who got kicked out of the Wonderbolts Academy for endangering other ponies with her recklessness. Here, she becomes a full-fledged Wonderbolt, and gets temporarily banished beyond the Fourth Wall while bravely fighting Lord Tirek.
• Adaptational Nice Guy:
  • Gilda was a jerk to everyone besides Rainbow Dash in the original episode, but here she just asks a lot of questions and eventually leaves in confusion.
  • In the original show, Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon were bullies. Here, Lieutenant Tiara and Spooky Spoon are helpful subordinates to the Cutie Mark Crusaders.
• Adaptational Villainy:
  • Steven Magnet was harmless in the original series. Here, he's Rarity's arch-nemesis; a later episode confirms that he's tried to kill and eat her multiple times in the past.
  • Trixie gets an upgrade from mere nuisance on the show to Twilight's (supposed) arch-nemesis.
  • And similarly, Derpy is eventually revealed to be the arch-nemesis of The Bird.
  • Little Strongheart was the one buffalo who argued against fighting the ponies. Here, she's reinterpreted as Harper, a changeling infiltrator among the buffalo who argues for going to war with Equestria.
• Adaptation Drift: The first three episodes follow the plot of the corresponding Friendship Is Magic episodes pretty closely. But subsequent episodes introduce completely different plots from the original show, villains from later seasons show up in the middle of season one, and the series develops an overarching plot about Equestria going to war. The series creators started frankensteining footage from different episodes (and even commissioned completely original animations) to tell the story they wanted—to the extent that the original finale, Episode 26, doesn't include any footage or plot details from "The Best Night Ever", the episode it's allegedly based on. The followup series, Scootertrix the Epilogue, uses completely original animation and doesn't even pretend to be an abridged series anymore.
• Adaptation Name Change:
  • Rainbow Dash goes by The Bird here.
  • In this version, Little Strongheart is instead a changeling infiltrator named Harper.
  • Applejack's mother is named General Builder rather than Pear Butter. Of course, the script for this reveal was written before "The Perfect Pear" aired.
  • Cadance and Shining Armor are instead Mare Window Maker and Stallion Window Maker, respectively—even before they get married.
• A Day in the Limelight: The 2015 Halloween Episode is focused on Luna, to the point that she even replaces Celestia's usual appearance in the opening titles.
• Advertised Extra:
  • Celestia's guards Aberforth and The Fourth Steven appear in the remixed opening titles for the Royal Correspondence spin-off, billed just after Celestia and Luna. But, ironically, they show up less in that series than in the main series. Aberforth gets a single non-speaking role in a flashback, and that's all.
  • Starting with episode 11, the Royal Correspondence titles got revamped, removing Aberforth and The Fourth Steven in the process. Ironically, Aberforth gets an actual (if brief) speaking role in episode 17—so his role got bigger after he was dropped from the opening.
• Aerith and Bob: Some ponies have normal Equestrian names like Twilight Sparkle and Applejack, while others have normal Earth names like Charlene and Jeff. And then there are names that don't quite fit into either category, like The Bird, Singing Steve, and The Fourth Steven.
• Always Someone Better:
  • Celestia is insanely jealous of Kevin Bacon's apparent faultlessness.
  • Apple Bloom resents Flash Sentry's unbroken streak of military victories, and she accuses him of always stealing her glory.
• Ambiguous Situation: At the climax of The Movie, the Mane Six get unexpected help at a crucial moment from three sets of their alternate-universe counterparts: the Mane Six from Camaraderie Is Supernatural and Ultra Fast Pony... plus a third copy of the Mane Six who don't say anything, and give no context clues to their identity. In the episode's commentary track, Jack Getschman confirms the ambiguity was intentional because he wanted viewers to be able to imagine this last Mane Six was from whichever series they preferred.
• Ambiguous Syntax: A line in "The Bird in the Hospital" manages to have three separate layers of ambiguity: (1) Fluttershy asks The Bird two questions in quick succession, and The Bird just gives one terse answer. (2.) The Bird may or may not also have Contradictionitis. (3.) We don't know the effects of Contradictionitis, but the name suggests it could be forcing The Bird to say the opposite of what she means. So we can't tell which question she's answering, and don't know if she has a condition, that may or may not be changing her answer beyond her control.
  Fluttershy: Did they hurt you, The Bird? Are you okay?
  The Bird: Yes.
• And Starring:
  • Spike is always introduced after the Mane Six in the opening credits with "and Spike".
  • The revamped opening credits for Scootertrix the Epilogue keeps the "and Spike" and also adds "with Luna & Celestia" immediately after.
• And the Adventure Continues: The final episode ends with several of the mane cast leaving to go on new adventures:
  • Spike and Rarity travel back to the Badlands, to see how it's changed in their absence.
  • Fluttershy gets bored with life in Ponyville and goes to the Seapony Kingdom to find new thrills. The Bird is reluctant, but Fluttershy talks her into coming along.
  • Pinkie Pie and Trixie go wander Equestria to find other Fourth users and educate them about using their powers responsibly.
  • Defied by Twilight and Applejack, who decide to remain in Ponyville and retire from being the Elements.
  • The epilogue reveals Fluttershy, the Bird, and Spike returned to Equestria two weeks later after their adventures went horribly wrong.
• And Then What?: Twilight tries to call out Nightmare Moon on the futility of her plan to cause eternal night, noting that it would only result in the death of all life and the desolation of the world she's just conquered. Unfortunately, it turns out that's exactly what Nightmare Moon wants.
• Angrish: In episode 10 Twilight wants to blast the bug swarm with the Elements of Harmony, but she's so flustered that she stumbles over her words and loses all ability to articulate her plan.
  Twilight: That's it! Heat up the death ray!
  Applejack: The what?
  Twilight: The death, friendship, the magic of friendship ray! The magic is friendship!
• Answer Cut:
  • Episode 11, when Twilight is asking about everypony's winter vests:
  Twilight: Where do you guys get those, anyway?
  Pinkie Pie: Ha! You wouldn't believe me if I told you. Get this: it's from...
  [Cut to...]
  Twilight: Rarity?
  Rarity: Um, hello, Twilight.
  • Episode 12:
  Luna: Are we even prepared for this? Equestria has been at peace for a thousand years.
  Celestia: Not to worry. I am hiring the absolute greatest generals in all of Equestria.
  Luna: Really? Who are you getting?
  [Cut to the Cutie Mark Crusaders]
• Anti-Humor:
  • In episode 8, Twilight offers to tell Applejack "the ultimate knock-knock joke". What Twi does instead is hype the joke up until AJ can't wait any longer, then tricks AJ into swapping places. The punchline is AJ's realization that she's telling a joke and has no idea how it goes.
  • When Spike joins Pinkie in the hot air balloon, in episode 13.
  Spike: Hey, Pinkie.
  Pinkie: Hey, Spike!
  Spike: Mind if I join you?
  Pinkie: Uh, sure.
  Spike: Thanks. [climbs aboard]
  [awkward pause]
  Pinkie: Wow. This scene wasn't funny at all.
• April Fools' Day: On April 1, 2017, they re-uploaded "Bean Quest", their abortive first attempt at an MLP abridged series.
  So this is the first thing that was ever released on Scootertrix Studios. It is also our first attempt at abridging.
  After about a month after it's release we took it down for obvious reasons.
• Arch-Nemesis: A Running Gag throughout the series is characters unexpectedly turning out to have an arch-nemesis. Celestia claims to have five, all of which have now been revealed: King Sombra, Queen Chrysalis, Spike, Sunset Shimmer, and Kevin Bacon. In The Movie, Celestia considers making Pinkie Pie her arch-nemesis as well, but Luna doesn't let her.
• Arc Words: Both Celestia and Trixie warn, independently of each other, that "unpleasant things stir in the south".
• Arduous Descent to Terra Firma: Episode 7 opens In Medias Res, with the main six at the top of Bald Mountain, about to confront a dragon. They drive away said dragon before the Cold Open is over. Then their trip back down the mountain takes up the bulk of the episode: what should be a Boring Return Journey instead proves surprisingly annoying, and the ponies get so lost they somehow wind up back at the mountaintop where they started. Eventually Twilight remembers that two of them are pegasi (who can just fly back) and two of them are unicorns (who can just teleport the rest of the party home).
• Armor-Piercing Question: In episode 22:
  Celestia: Luna, let me ask you a question. If there was a princess who did bad things, but they always resulted in good things happening, would that princess be good?
  Luna: Wha— no! She would be evil. That pretty much defines evil. That is evil!
  Celestia: Then let's say there is a princess who always tried to do good, but it always seemed to result in evil. Would she be evil?
  Luna: No, because at least she tries to do the right thing.
  Celestia: Last question. Which one would you want ruling the kingdom?
• Arson, Murder, and Jaywalking:
  • In the Christmas Special, Celestia rattles off a long list of Snowdrop's alleged crimes (though Cumulo Nimbus's internal monologue covers up half of it), ending with, "And she hates puppies! ...Probably."
  • In "Raiders of the Lost Arch Nemesis", Celestia gloats about finding her arch-nemsis, and Luna tries to guess which of them she's referring to:
  Luna: Is it Discord? Because he's still in the garden. [...] Kevin Bacon? [...] Sombra? Chrysalis? That filly from IKEA?
• Art Evolution: Starting with episode 19, the show gets a new and improved title sequence. In addition, the airship designs become notably sleeker and more detailed.
• Artistic License – Statistics: In-Universe, in "The Bird in the Hospital":
  Twilight: Is she gonna be okay?!
  Nurse: Well, according to our diagnosis, she has a 99% chance of dying, but we're 99% wrong in the diagnosis usually, so I'd say she has a 50% chance of survival!
  Applejack: Did my sister teach you math?
• Art Shift:
  • Rarity's tale of her childhood in Episode 14 is illustrated with atmospheric stills drawn by Mikhail Josephson. Ditto Celestia's story of the front lines in Episode 22.
  • For Scootertrix the Epilogue, they've switched over to original art by Kingpin (with some contributions from Cyclone 62), with zero clips from the original show. Which pushes Scootertrix out of the realm of Abridged Series and into fan animation.
• Attack! Attack... Retreat! Retreat!: In Episode 21, Braeburn gives a speech to rally the militia of the western colonies, vowing that they'll fight to the last against the buffalo forces. Then the buffalo's changeling air support arrive. Braeburn cuts his speech short and calls for a full retreat.
• Audience? What Audience?:
  • Trixie falls foul of this when trying to demonstrate her Fourth Wall powers to the Ponyville townsponies; they just think that she's gone mad and is talking to someone who isn't there.
  • From episode 13, after a scene transition:
    Pinkie: And we're back! Applejack and The Bird are still neck and neck.
    Spike: Back? Back from what? We're still here.
  • In episode 15, Twilight finally witnesses Pinkie talking to someone beyond the Fourth Wall, and is naturally confounded by it, until Pinkie eventually reveals the truth to her.
• Author Filibuster: Played for Laughs. "The Editor" literally pauses the episode in episode 3 so that he can spend about a minute apologizing for a misspelling in the disclaimer of the previous two episodes. Unfortunately, Pinkie won't let him live it down afterward.
• Back in the Saddle: In The Movie, the Pinkie Pie from Camaraderie Is Supernatural sees her series' indefinite hiatus as a much-desired retirement from the Abridged Series game. At Twilight's urging, Pinkie brings the gang out of retirement to help take down Discord.
  Camaraderie Pinkie Pie: Not bad after seven years out of the game!
• Badass Boast: After the Diamond Dogs have the Mane Six and Spike cornered, Twilight realizes they have to fight their way out, while Fluttershy panics and says they can't fight them. Twilight's response?
  Twilight: Fluttershy! We are The Elements of Freaking Harmony!
• Bait-and-Switch Accusation: In the teaser of episode 15, it looks like Twilight has caught Spike in the act of sending hate mail to Celestia... when in fact, she's just annoyed that he keeps using her parchment supplies without asking. This actually turns out to be a double Bait-and-Switch, as Celestia catches him in the act moments later.
• Batman Cold Open: Episode 26 opens with the mane six clashing with Starlight Glimmer. After the opening titles roll (and Glim-Glam disappears into the Inescapable Caves of Doom off-screen), the main plot of the episode involves Princess Celestia officiating a wedding, and the fallout that results. Later, the cold open ends up tying into the main plot, when Queen Chrysalis uses Starlight Glimmer's identity to foment a revolution in Equestria.
• Batman Gambit: Celestia pulls one off in "Raiders of the Lost Arch Nemesis" by correctly predicting that Twilight would attempt to bring Sunset Shimmer back to her throne room.
• Battle Cry:
  • Two in the "The Return of Lord Tirek": "HARMONY!" when the Elements of Harmony teleport in, and "FRIENDSHIP!" when they unleash the Friendship Ray.
  • In The Movie, the Ultra Fast Pony version of the mane six all shout "MURDER!" as they unleash their Friendship ray at Discord.
• Beat: Used often. Most notably, episode 16 opens with Twilight and The Bird staring at each other, silently, for several seconds.
• Beneath Suspicion: Inverted in "Snowdrop the Abridged". Celestia almost immediately suspects young Snowdrop pranked her, and tries claim the fact that no one would normally suspect Snowdrop is precisely why she's so suspicious.
  Celestia: Nopony would suspect the little blind girl! On the outside she is a harmless filly, but on the inside she is a criminal mastermind!
• Big Budget Beef-Up: Becomes a plot point in episode 25. Pinkie insists that, for all Discord's power, he's still limited to editing footage from the original show. Discord replies that, thanks to Patreon supporters, Scootertrix has a budget now and can make completely original animations as needed—so Discord can really do anything.
• Big "SHUT UP!": Applejack delivers one against Twilight in episode 8, after the latter starts to lose her temper over Rarity's increasingly nonsensical claims.
• Big Bad Ensemble: Discord, Chrysalis, and Sombra are all threats to Equestria and have separate and mutually opposed goals. Chrysalis emerges as the sole Big Bad in the finale after Discord and Sombra are dispatched in The Movie.
• Big Bad Wannabe: Sombra has the potential to be a Big Bad, but his ego and stupidity means he never uses his powers and army of the dead to their fullest extent, and he ultimately dies because Luna throughly outclasses him in every way possible.
• Bittersweet Ending:
  • Episode 14 ends with only a minor consolation for Rarity.
  • Even though "Raiders of the Lost Arch Nemesis" ends with Celestia very happy (and it's heavily implied that she orchestrated the whole thing in the first place), Twilight is sent home unwell and with the disheartening impression that she failed her mission.
• Black Comedy:
  • Normally in an Abridged Series, the fact that the characters know they're in a show drives many of the jokes. In this series, it's (mostly) Played for Drama. Pinkie Pie doesn't find it funny that she's a character on a show. Instead, the knowledge that the show could end without warning, due to a copyright takedown or the creators' losing interest, is a constant source of anxiety for her—as are her efforts to prevent other ponies from learning the truth and panicking.
  • Several ponies imply that, even in Equestria, treatment for a broken limb on a horse isn't much more effective than it is in our world—and usually ends with them getting shot to put them out of their misery.
  • In episode 12, Scootaloo tells the harrowing tale of how her entire family burned to death in a house fire... and then we find out that it happened yesterday.
  • In "The Bird's Arch Nemesis", Derpy gets some horrific injuries from her fight with The Bird. As she lies in a hole, screaming in pain and describing her injuries in great detail, most of the ponies around her just get annoyed or grossed out.
  • The nurse in "The Bird in the Hospital" tries this on Twilight, Applejack, and Fluttershy by informing them that The Bird has cancer, before revealing that no, he was just joking. They are not amused.
• "Blackmail" Is Such an Ugly Word: In episode 16:
  Twilight: What? No! No, it's not cheating. We're just... bending the rules a little, that's all.
• Blinded by the Sun: In episode 5 of Royal Correspondence, Celestia realizes she's never gotten a good look at the Sun, despite controlling it for over a thousand years. So she points her telescope at it, with predictable results.
  Princess Luna: Wait... why are both your eyes burned out?
  Princess Celestia: Ah... yes... Well, you see... I didn't get a real good look at the Sun, because my eye burnt out so fast. So I just used the other eye...
• Blind Mistake: Episode 20 introduces Photo Finish, whose blindness means she can't tell how many ponies are in a room. She freaks out every time someone new talks to her.
• Body Horror: Played with in Episode 22, as the various antics of Celestia's pet bird—twisting her neck with audible cracks, swelling up with the water from the bathtub—terrify Fluttershy.
• Book Ends: The series begins (as does the original show) with Nightmare Moon/Princess Luna escaping from being trapped in the moon, and ends with Celestia being sent to the moon, to recover from injuries gained during her battle with Queen Chrysalis.
• Boring Return Journey: In Episode 7, the mane six deal with the dragon during the Cold Open. They spend the rest of the episode just getting back down the mountain.
  Twilight: You know, when you think of grand adventures, of dragons and quests, you forget about the long, uneventful journey home.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: Discord rewrites Pinkie Pie as an insane psychopath, in an attempt to make her murder her friends.
• Break the Haughty: Apple Bloom, the confident master strategist and ringleader of the trio of generals, falls into despair when her military plans fail. It takes a potent pep talk from fellow generals Loo and Belle to snap her out of it.
• Broken Masquerade: In episode 15, Twilight finally discovers the Fourth Wall and wrestles with the knowledge that she's a character in a cartoon show.
• Brought Down to Normal: "Raiders of the Lost Arch Nemesis" involves Twilight contracting Larsonism, which drains her magic and leaves her powerless to deal with Sunset Shimmer. She appears to catch Larsonism again in the Batman Cold Open for Episode 26—but this time she's just faking it.
• Brutal Honesty: In "Raiders of the Lost Arch Nemesis":
  Sunset Shimmer: Okay, you guys are officially freaking me out right now. Is this a prank?
  The Bird: No, we're trying to kill you.
• Buffy Speak: In episode 17, Fluttershy calls the cockatrice a "cocka-snake... chicken-head... thing".
• …But He Sounds Handsome:
  • In the storybook opening of episode 1, the narrator pauses the action to gush over how awesome Princess Celestia is, and how much power it takes to raise and lower the Sun. Episode 2 reveals that Celestia herself was the narrator of that segment.
  • Meta example in episode 20. Leslie, the changeling who imitates The Bird, is voiced by DoodledPony (creator of [HORSE]). In the comment section below the video, he wrote:
  DoodledPony: Huh, The Bird sounds more handsome than usual. ... I wonder why.
• By "No", I Mean "Yes":
  Celestia: Twilight, look. Friendship isn't always the answer. Well I mean, it is, but this time it wasn't.
• Call-Back:
  • In episode 15, Twilight recalls several of Pinkie's various Fourth Wall breaks from previous episodes.
  • The Bird's altitude-enhanced intelligence, first established in Episode 16, shows up again when she visits the Badlands in Episode 21.
  • Episode 21 also shows Princess Luna governing Equestria by herself, since Celestia left for the front lines, as shown in Royal Correspondence Episode 9.
• The Cameo: Andrea Libman briefly reprises her role as Pinkie Pie in the epilogue.
• Casual Danger Dialogue:
  • In episode 10, The Bird hears the word "movies" and feels the urge to tell the others about her top three favorite movies... while they're all the middle of disposing of the biological weapon. Twilight tries to argue that it's not a good time for this conversation, but even she gets caught up on commenting on The Bird's choices.
  • In The Movie, as the Wonderbolts fly into battle against Lord Tirek, Llama tries to correct The Bird on the pronunciation of her name^note It's "Yama". The "Ll" makes a "Y" sound. and The Bird keeps Comically Missing the Point.
• Cassandra Truth:
  • In episode 20, the changeling spy Kyle learns the true identities of Celestia's top generals. But his boss Leslie rejects this outright, refusing to believe Celestia's crazy enough to let three children manage her entire military.
  • In episode 26, Fluttershy announces she's going to move to the seapony kingdom. Applejack and The Bird immediately point out why this is a bad idea, but Fluttershy brushes them off and even badgers The Bird into coming along with her. Sure enough, the "Two Weeks Later" epilogue sees them return to Ponyville; their trip was an utter disaster for exactly the reasons predicted.
  The Bird: What? No, we can't do that. They live underwater. And sing. Like, all the time.
  Applejack: You do know what happens when you two descend from the clouds to the ground. And now you want to go down into the ocean?
  The Bird: Yeah, I don't know about this.
• Catchphrase Interruptus: Twilight does this to Rarity in the teaser of episode 9, having predicted that Rarity's about to try to sell her a dress again.
• The Cavalry Arrives Late: In The Movie, the Applejack from The Mentally Advanced Series heads back to her own universe to get the Spear of Nidhogg, a weapon that killed their version of Discord and just might work against the Scootertrix Discord. MAS Applejack finally returns with the Spear... only after the others have defeated Discord with the Elements of Harmony.
• Caught Monologuing:
  • Quite a bit in The Movie. When Discord has Pinkie and Trixie trapped behind a rock, he starts monologuing about his backstory, and takes so long that Pinkie and Trixie can formulate an escape plan and logically figure out Discord's weakness while he's distracted. When the mane six put on the Elements of Harmony and face Discord, Twilight tries to give a dramatic speech—and Discord freezes them all in the middle of it.^note For what it's worth, they probably wouldn't have fared any better if they had just attacked without the speech, since that's exactly what the UFP mane six did, and Discord still neutralized them. At the end, everypony learns a valuable lesson:
  Celestia: Well, that just goes to show: monologue as you deal the death blow. Kill two birds with one stone.
  • In episode 26, Chrysalis tries to defy this trope. She incapacitates Princess Celestia, then all she has to say is, "I won't prolong your imminent death with a monologue. So... bye!" Ironically this brief pause is still enough time for Princess Luna to swoop in and rescue Celestia from the killing blow.
• Cerebus Retcon:
  • Applejack's insistence that her apples are mangoes. Initially it's just a quirk to cement Twilight as an Only Sane Man. But episode 23 reveals that her mother left home after an argument with Granny Smith and said she would return when there were "no more Apples", so a young Applejack tried to convince herself that they were growing mangoes in the hopes her mother would return.
  • Almost everything about The Bird. Her strange name, her odd response to the word "hello", even her goofy non-answer that she's named The Bird "So that there's no confusion" are all explained in The Movie as a result of her prior career in the Wonderbolts 25th Air Cavalry. She used to be named Rainbow Dash, and "The Bird" was her title when she became squad leader. (The Bird, "So that there's no confusion.") "Hello" was Captain Spitfire's call to attention. And Rainbow Dash sustained brain damage while fighting Tirek, which caused her to believe The Bird was her name.
  • Pinkie Pie's powers over the Fourth. Initially there was no explanation for her powers—she just had them because that was the trend in MLP fan works. Then episode 23 reveals that, when Pinkie was a filly, the magic of the Fourth washed over her in the form of a rainbow-colored shockwave, and that's how she got her powers. Then The Movie reveals that shockwave was caused by the death of Tirek, after having supercharged himself with stolen magic from the Fourth.
• Changed My Mind, Kid: In The Movie, when the alternate universe ponies wind up in Twilight's library, she tries to convince them to help fight Discord, but the Applejack from The Mentally Advanced Series is the only one who agrees to do so; the rest just go back to their own universes. Then during the climactic fight, the mane six ponies from Camaraderie Is Supernatural and Ultra Fast Pony (plus a third mane six whose identities are deliberately ambiguous) all return, just in time to help with Discord's defeat. Apparently the Pinkie from Camaraderie intended to return with reinforcements all along and simply forgot to tell Twilight before leaving, while the other mane sixes have no explanation for why they changed their minds.
• Chekhov's Gag: Spike's discussion of pony Meaningful Names (and how to game the system) in episode 14 initially seems like just a funny conversation. But the concept turns out to be very important later:
  • Granny Smith actually did try to game the system, by naming her daughter General Builder. And this was one factor that made Builder believe the whole family was manipulating her, leading to her running away.
  • "Raiders of the Lost Arch Nemesis" reveals pony names really are magic: Sunset Shimmer is a living nullifier for Celestia's powers, solely because of her name. And Episode 26 reveals Queen Chrysalis gave Sunset her name for precisely this reason. Chrysalis successfully defeats and depowers Celestia by copying Sunset's magic.
• Chekhov's Gunman:
  • Before Kevin Bacon's actual "appearance" in the show, a few dialogue references foreshadowed his role as an off-screen ace, loved by nearly everyone. In episode 3, one pony tries to get Twilight's extra Gala ticket by offering, "I can introduce you to Kevin Bacon!" Similarly, during the rabbit stampede in episode 4, one panicking mare shouts "If only Kevin Bacon were here!"
  • Apple Bloom is introduced in episode 9 merely as Applejack's little sister, but turns out to be Celestia's go-to military general in episode 12.
• Chekhov's Skill: In "Trixie the Abridged", while showing off her mastery of the Fourth to Twilight, Trixie demonstrates the ability to perfectly mimic the appearance of other ponies. Later in The Movie, she uses this ability to fool Discord into believing that she's Pinkie Pie, buying the real Pinkie time to escape and regroup with the Elements of Harmony.
• Christmas Episode: The special episode "Snowdrop the Abridged" was initially released under the title "Scootertrix the Abridged: Christmas Special". In spite of the fact the plot had nothing to do with Christmas anyway.
• Child Soldiers: Generals Apple Bloom, Scootaloo, Sweetie Belle, and their lieutenants Diamond Tiara and Spooky Spoon.
• Cliffhanger:
  • The ending of episode 15. Pinkie Pie explains that knowledge of the Fourth Wall could be dangerous in the wrong hands. The scene cuts to Discord, petrified in Celestia's garden. A crack appears. Roll credits.
  • Episode 24 ends with the arrival of a mysterious voice with more power over the Fourth than any prior character, and Pinkie discovering she can't see the Script any more.
  • Episode 25. Discord brainwashes Pinkie to make her kill her friends. The scene turns to the intro from an infamous fan-animation of Pinkie gruesomely murdering the mane six. Pinkie leaps at Twilight—and the episode cuts to black just before her kick can connect.
• Cluster Bleep-Bomb: In The Movie, a bunch of ponies from other Abridged Series wind up in Twilight's library, a few of them much more foul-mouthed than the ponies from Scootertrix. The air gets thick with censor bleeps as these ponies try to cuss, and then upon discovering they can't in this universe, protest by trying to cuss even more.
• Coconut Superpowers: Rarity and other changelings can change forms at will, but are nearly always seen in their pony guises rather than their natural insectoid forms, and are rarely seen actually changing from one form to another. This avoids the need for the editing and visual effects that would otherwise be required. A major plot development in episode 26 results in all the changelings spending a lot more time in their insectoid forms—just before the series ends. Then the continuation, Scootertrix the Epilogue, switches to hand-drawn animation, making it far easier to depict Rarity in her natural form.
• Comically Inept Healing: The nurse from "The Bird in the Hospital". He mistakes The Bird for an earth pony, reads from the wrong medical file (briefly scaring Fluttershy, Twilight, and Applejack into thinking that The Bird just died), and has no idea if The Bird is going to recover or not (due to either shoddy diagnosis or no clue how statistics work). Add to that a very poorly thought-out joke about The Bird's condition, and it's easy to see why Applejack declares the nurse is worst pony.
• Comically Missing the Point:
  • Applejack completely misinterprets Twilight's reason for visiting her in episode 4. Twi explains that she's discovered an apple brew to neutralize the curse on the town, but Applejack is still firmly in denial about growing apples—she concludes that Twilight's come to sacrifice her.
  • In episode 14, when Rarity reveals that she's a changeling, both The Bird and Fluttershy misinterpret it to conclude that Fluttershy is a changeling.
  • Again in episode 14, Twilight gets annoyed that The Bird just walked away during an important conversation:
  The Bird: Okay, I'm back. What'd I miss?
  Twilight: What do you mean, you're back?
  The Bird: I just went to get some ice cream. They didn't have any chocolate, though.
  Twilight: Are you kidding me?!
  The Bird: I know. Chocolate's my favorite.
  • In "Raiders of the Lost Arch Nemesis", when Twilight spontaneously grows wings, Fluttershy's reaction is:
  Fluttershy: She just sprouted wings, man! Am I gonna sprout wings?!
  The Bird: Fluttershy, you have wings.
  Fluttershy: Oh my god!
  • In The Movie, Twilight tells all the others in the library that she needs to concentrate so she can research. Rarity (the version from Ultra Fast Pony) points out that the best way to concentrate is to block out distractions—then keeps yammering on and on and on about blocking out distractions, completely unaware that she's become one of those distractions herself.
  • Also in The Movie, The Bird's escalating misunderstanding of how Llama's name should be pronounced.
  • In "The Bird in the Hospital", the nurse mistakes concern over The Bird's condition for criticism of his own pronunciation.
  Nurse: She's contracted con-tra-dic-tion-eye-tus.
  Fluttershy: That sounds awful!
  Nurse: Oh, I'm sorry. I could get someone else to say it, if you want.
• Comically Small Bribe: When the whole town is hounding Twilight for her extra ticket to the Grand Galloping Gala, Shoeshine tries bribing Twi with some carrots she just found on the sidewalk.
• Comical Overreacting:
  • The Cutie Mark Crusaders are confounded, dismayed, and slightly terrified by the concept of negative numbers.
  • The mane six all start panicking when Twilight suddenly sprouts wings. And when Princess Luna wonders why growing wings is a bad thing, Celestia acts like that was an incredibly offensive question to ask.
• Consulting a Convicted Killer: In Episode 26, Luna's baffled at how Chrysalis was able negate Celestia's magic. So she goes to Tartarus to consult the only other person who could counter Celestia like that: Sunset Shimmer. Amusingly, Sunset enjoys Evil Gloating so much (and she's very confident in Chrysalis' victory anyway) that she just gives up all the information Luna wants without asking for any favors in return.
• Continuity Nod:
  • The Berry Punch Noodle Incident mentioned in the very first episode is brought up again in episode 10.
  • In episode 3, Lemon Hearts randomly name-drops someone named Charlene. In episode 10, we actually meet her.
  • In episode 7, Fluttershy mentions that she's from Cloudsdale, and describes it as "the safest place in the world", a sentiment that she repeats when she revisits Cloudsdale with The Bird in episode 16:
  The Bird: Ah, there it is. Home.
  Fluttershy: Yeah. The safest and most boring place imaginable.
  • In Royal Correspondence, episode 7, "the jingle" doesn't work correctly, and a "new jingle" temporarily takes its place while the old one gets fixed. Luna winds up liking the new jingle better. Fast forward to later in the series, and anytime Luna is left governing Equestria by herself, the new jingle plays over Canterlot Establishing Shots.
  • In the special "Raiders of the Lost Arch Nemesis", Celestia finally gets to engage with a true arch-nemesis, and is clearly enjoying the experience immensely - just as she tried to explain to Luna all the way back in episode 6 when extolling the joys of "arching" to her. (Luna still doesn't agree).
    • In the same special, Celestia also threatens to injure Spike by sending an entire sofa via dragonfire — a possibility that Spike considered back in episode 5.
    • Also, Rarity, Fluttershy, and The Bird make numerous references to the last time Princess Celestia sent them to a parallel universe (back in "Scootertrix Is for Adults").
  • Princess Celestia explains to Luna that the Elements of Harmony are fantastic for blasting things with their friendship ray, but they are terrible diplomats. Come episode 21, when The Bird, Pinkie, and Spike try to negotiate a peaceful resolution to the Buffalo-Changeling alliance, they fail spectacularly.
  • In "The Bird in the Hospital", Applejack asks the nurse, "Did my sister teach you math?" referencing the CMC's struggles with math in episodes 11 and 18.
  • In "Pony's Best Friend", Twilight asks "this isn't another mango thing, is it?", while investigating a problem in Applejack's orchard.
• Cool and Unusual Punishment:
  • When Celestia finally discovers that Spike is the one sending her the nasty letters, she retaliates by sending the letters back to Spike. All at the same time. The strain of coughing so many letters leaves Spike debilitated for some hours.
  • "Twilight's Punishment" turns out to be this. To punish her terrible crime of making owl puns, the committee subjects Twilight to hours of horse puns.
• Cool Airship:
  • The Jabberwocky, an Earth pony zeppelin that makes an awesome entrance in episode 16, and also has a blink-and-you'll-miss-it appearance in the opening titles of Royal Correspondence. Episode 16 reveals that the Equestrian military has an fleet of armed airships which they've been building up as a prelude to war.
  • Episode 21 reveals that the Changeling Empire also possesses airships, with the appearance of The Swarm, a heavily-armed zeppelin that annihilates Appleloosa.
• Couch Gag: A rather subtle one in the ending credits. For the first six episodes, The Editor misspells DeviantArt as "Devient Art". Then in episode 7, the spelling gets fixed. Then in episodes 8 through 14, The Editor goes back to misspelling it—and misspells it a completely different way each time. Then Pinkie Pie points it out in episode 15.
• *Cough* Snark *Cough*: In episode 16:
  Pinkie: We can't make plot holes like that. It won't make any sense.
  Spike: [cough]Magic![cough]
• Credits Gag:
  • The closing credits for episode 5 are unexpectedly interrupted by the sounds of someone assaulting The Editor; obviously this is Pinkie, who had made a violent threat toward him earlier in the episode.
  • Following the destruction of the Fourth Wall in "Trixie the Abridged", Episode 25 has no credits at all.
• Crossover:
  • "Scootertrix is for Adults", in which an interdimensional portal connects the Scootertrix universe with another MLP abridged series, Friendship Is for Adults. This spawned an ongoing crossover series, Royal Correspondence.
  • In "Trixie the Abridged", Twilight and Trixie's duel accidentally transports them both into the universe of My Little Pony: Camaraderie is Supernatural.
  • And then The Movie winds up being a Massive Multiplayer Crossover.
• Crossover Finale: The Movie is a Massive Multiplayer Crossover which manages to provide some degree of closure to a few other abridged series that had been on indefinite hiatus (or outright cancelled) before:
  • Camaraderie Is Supernatural: Pinkie Pie and Doctor Whooves did save Equestria from the alien invaders, though it took them 492 failed attempts.
  • Friendship Is Witchcraft: Sometime after their equivalent of Season 8, Princess Celestia snapped and cast a stasis spell over all Equestria, in a futile attempt to get some peace and quiet.
  • Ultra Fast Pony: The mane six are just as stupid and awful to each other as ever. At the end of their scene, Twilight petulantly declares they're going back on hiatus. (Ironically, UFP came back out of hiatus shortly after The Movie went live.)
• Critical Existence Failure: When Fluttershy defeats the cockatrice in episode 17, it explodes into vapor. Even she's confused by this.
• Cruel and Unusual Death: The combined magic of the Elements of Harmony literally melts Nightmare Moon's brain. And it's not a quick death, either; she's conscious for several seconds while this is happening.
• Cryptically Unhelpful Answer:
  Twilight: Actually, you know, I'm curious... why are you called "The Bird"?
  The Bird: So that there's no confusion.
• Curb-Stomp Battle:
  • Twilight immediately defeats Trixie's clone army, thanks to an anti-clone spell.
  • The battle between the Zebras and the Changelings apparently went this way. The Zebras had difficulty coordinating because their language consists entirely of riddles.
  • In "The Bird's Arch Nemesis", The Bird tries to avoid fighting Derpy, but Derpy keeps attacking her. When The Bird finally does fight back, she leaves Derpy in a battered mess with all her limbs broken.
  • In Episode 21, the battle of the western colonies goes this way. Heck, calling it a "battle" is being generous: the pony militia immediately retreats upon seeing the full buffalo-changeling forces.
  • The episode "The Return of Lord Tirek" is barely over a minute long, because the mane six kill Tirek with the Elements of Harmony in mere seconds.
• Curse: In episode 4, Applejack forces a herd of cattle to detour around Ponyville, rather than stampeding straight through. The cows retaliate by cursing Ponyville, which afflicts the town with earthquakes, plague, crop failure, and a rabbit stampede over the next few days.
• Curse Cut Short:
  • After her first meeting with The Bird, Twilight manages to get out "What the fu—" before the cut to the next scene.
  • In episode 3, Spike's f-bomb is cut short by the closing credits.
  • In episode 23, Scootaloo responds to Pinkie's sudden disappearance with "What the fu—", then she's cut off by a transition to Discord's statue.
• Cutaway Gag: In episode 21:
  Chief Thunderhooves: Celestia has parched our land and seeks to settle her outcast ponies here. [...]
  The Bird: What do you mean, "outcasts"?
  Chief Thunderhooves: Seriously? Have you been to the colonies?
  [Cut away to Appleloosa, where all the settler ponies are falling-down drunk or screaming like idiots.]
  Braeburn: Aaaaappleloooossaaaaaaaaaaaaaa!
  Applejack: Oh my God, you need to shut up.
• Cute, but Cacophonic: Two of the flower mares, Daisy and Lily, have extremely shrill voices. It's bad enough that, when they get a scene in episode 9, The Editor decides they're just too annoying and fast-forwards through the rest of it.
• Cuteness Proximity: In "Pony's Best Friend", Twilight finds Winona so cute, she immediately acquiesces to her requests for food. Or at least, Twilight would, if Applejack weren't there to point out that Winona's already eaten.
• Cutting the Knot: At the climax of "Raiders of the Lost Arch Nemesis", Celestia is powerless because of Sunset Shimmer's presence, and Twilight can't use magic because of her larsonism, so Sunset gloats that nobody can possibly stop her now... Then Luna, who everyone had ignored up to this point, blasts Sunset with her own magic, sending her straight to Tartarus with a single shot.
• Dangerous Forbidden Technique: Pinkie is reluctant to use her Fourth Wall abilities to solve problems, as she fears that it might create dangerous Plot Holes.
• Dark Horse Victory: Applejack and The Bird are the leading competitors in the Running of the Leaves, but at the last minute, Kevin Bacon wins. And he gives his medal to Twilight.
• Dark Reprise: The trailer for episode 25 uses a slow piano version of the main Scootertrix theme.
• Dating Catwoman:
  • In Royal Correspondence episode 17, Celestia suggests that Luna could interrupt King Sombra's monologue by kissing him on the lips. (Then taking advantage of his confusion to zap him.) Celestia admits she's used that same tactic against Sombra in the past... and against Discord, and Tirek, and the Smooze, and Chrysalis.
  • In Episode 26, Chrysalis throws this back at Celestia, and actually gets her flustered by acting as though Celestia still has feelings for her.
  Chrysalis: Awww, you threw this party just for me?
  Celestia: No, not like that. Don't—
  Chrysalis: I'm touched. A lot. Just like you touched me. A lot...
• The Day the Music Lied: In episode 21, after The Bird, Pinkie, and Spike are captured by the buffalo, Applejack leads the rest of her friends to rescue them. Kick-ass music starts playing as they charge out of Appleloosa—then it stops a second later (with a Record Scratch) when they run into The Bird and the rest, who negotiated their own release off-screen.
• Deader than Dead:
  Celestia: With the help of my magic sun powers, we cut down through their ranks! By the end of the first day, thirty thousand of them lay at our hooves, dead. ...Well, dead dead. Y'know because, well, they're zombies.
• Deaf Composer: Or rather, blind photographer; Photo Finish, who appears in episode 20, is completely blind.
• Death from Above: Apple Bloom commands a fleet of armed zeppelins; and, although they haven't been seen yet, Scootaloo also commands the pegasus cloud fortresses, which seem to be mobile aerial bombardment platforms. In episode 18, the two combine their air power to attack Sombra's zombie ground troops and drive them back.
• Death Is Cheap: For King Sombra at least. Celestia has killed him six times, but his crazed followers keep resurrecting him.
• Defensive Feint Trap:
  • Flash Sentry uses one in episode 18 to take out a changeling battalion.
  • Chrysalis pulls a particularly sneaky one in episode 26. When Luna sends Equestria's air fleet to destroy the changeling Citadel, the changelings only put up a token defense. Afterwards, changeling disguised as ponies in Equestria use the "victory" to turn public opinion against Luna, claiming she committed war crimes and was prejudiced against the changelings. This culminates in the disguised Chrysalis leading an anti-monarch revolution, threatening to cause riots all over Equestria if Luna doesn't abdicate the throne.
• Deflector Shields: King Sombra cast a massive shield spell to protect the Crystal Empire. This is the whole reason Celestia's so calm about dropping a meteor shower on Sombra's zombie army—the shield will prevent any civilian casualties. It's also one of those semi-permeable shields (it blocks energy attacks and solid projectiles, but people can just walk right through it) thus allowing Celestia and Luna to sneak into the city and directly attack Sombra in episode 25.
• Department of Redundancy Department: From "Scootertrix is for Adults":
  Twilight: Are you flirting with me?
  Rainbow Dash: What, did the flirting give it away?
• Deus Exit Machina: In Royal Correspondence Episode 10, the Friendship Is For Adults version of Celestia and Luna are visited by a fourth-dimensional being, who's pissed about all the recent travel between different universes. He reluctantly allows Luna to continue being penpals with her Scootertrix counterpart, but threatens dire consequences if anyone interferes with any future events in the other universe. This preemptively explains why Scootertrix Celestia and Luna can't get any help from their FIFA counterparts in the war against Chrysalis and Sombra—and why the FIFA mane six bluntly refuse to help Pinkie and Trixie deal with Discord in The Movie.
• Didn't Think This Through:
  • In episode 2, Pinkie shows the others how to dispel the scary tree faces by laughing at them. She starts to laugh at the last tree... while she's inside its mouth. The others stop Pinkie in time, and she realizes that could have been messy.
  • In episode 10, Twilight goes to Charlene, Ponyville's biggest gossip, to ask if she's heard anything about the location of a biological weapon. Twi explains to Fluttershy that she doesn't want to incite a panic... and then realizes that, if she wanted to stop the news from spreading, then Charlene was the worst pony to confide in.
  • In episode 17, the CMC attempt to capture a cockatrice, but they don't seem to have any strategy beyond wandering the Everfree Forest until they find it. Both Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle call Apple Bloom out on the shortcomings of this plan.
  • In episode 20, Rarity invests capital in Carousel Boutique to expand her business: buying new machinery, hiring a secretary, etc. Then she remembers that ninety percent of ponies don't wear clothes.
  • In Royal Correspondence episode 17, Celestia mentions in passing that she once tried to confuse Queen Chrysalis by kissing her in the middle of a battle. Considering that Chrysalis gains power by feeding on love... "That... was a mistake. Don't kiss Chryssie."
  • In episode 25, King Sombra overwhelms Celestia's mind by sending her the Nightmares of every pony in Equestria. In The Movie, he tries the same attack against Luna—and she's completely unaffected because she already deals with every pony's nightmares every night.
• Directionless Driver: Spike (unsurprisingly) repeatedly refuses to let Twilight see the map to the library in the first episode, until she finally gets fed up and forces it from him.
• Discussed Trope: Twilight recognizes a Scooby-Dooby Doors situation in episode 22, but can't remember how to actually get out of it.
• Dispel Magic: Twilight counters Trixie's clone spell with an "anti-clone spell".
• Disproportionate Retribution: A herd of cows threaten to stampede through (and presumably would have destroyed) Ponyville. Applejack forces them to detour around it instead, and for that slight, the cows decide to put a curse on the town.
• Distinction Without a Difference: In "The Bird's Arch Nemesis", Pinkie Pie objects to the idea of Mercy Killing another pony over some broken legs:
  Pinkie Pie: How could you say that?
  Mayor Mare: Well, that's what you're supposed to do, right?
  Pinkie Pie: [beat] For horses, I guess.
  Mayor Mare: We are horses!
  Pinkie Pie: No! We're ponies!
  Mayor Mare: Oh, same God-damn thing!
• Don't Explain the Joke: In Episode 25:
  Luna: Equestria has been at peace for a thousand years.
  Sombra: You mean in pieces for a thousand years. [laughs] You see what I did there?
  Luna: Yes.
  Sombra: With "peace" and "piece"? I took a class.
  Luna: Yes, I got it, thank you.
• Downer Ending:
  • Episode 4 ends on Applejack suffering some kind of internal mental crisis.
  • Episode 21 ends with the pony-buffalo negotiations failing, and the buffalo and changeling armies overrunning Equestria's western colonies.
• Drama Bomb: Episode 23 starts off appearing to be a normal comedic episode... then, halfway through, Applejack learns that her mother has died.
• Dramatically Missing the Point: In "Trixie the Abridged", Trixie actually gets what she's looking for: an admission from Twilight that Trixie is better than her at something. But Trixie remains unsatisfied^note possibly because her new skill—mastery over the Fourth—is something she can't flaunt without destroying the world and vows she'll be back to fight Twilight again.
• Dramatic Irony: In Royal Correspondence episode 17, Luna asks her alternate-universe counterpart, "Does your sister kiss her arch-nemeses? Cause mine does." What she doesn't realize is, that version of Celestia actually does want to kiss her arch-nemesis.^note Kanterlot's Celestia has a huge, unrequited crush on Twilight Sparkle—the Villain Protagonist of the series who's already tried to overthrow Celestia several times.
• The Dreaded: In episode 19, the diamond dogs are utterly terrified of a fanfiction character, The Candymare. So scared that they all flee when Rarity tricks them into believing that The Candymare is real.
• Droste Image: In one possible story path in The Movie, Pinkie winds up on a YouTube page, with The Movie itself running in the video player behind her. The infinite recursion in the video gets trippier as the camera moves around her.
• Duct Tape for Everything: In The Movie, the Camaraderie Is Supernatural Pinkie Pie suggests getting a few rolls of duct tape to patch up any remaining dimensional leaks.
• Dude, Not Funny!: In-Universe. In "The Bird in the Hospital", Fluttershy, Twilight, and Applejack are worried sick about The Bird's condition. So the nurse tries to lighten the mood... by telling them The Bird has cancer, then saying "Gotcha!" The others take it as well as you'd expect.
• Early-Installment Weirdness:
  • The scripts for the first few episodes were notably shorter than those for later episodes—Getschman explained that he hadn't yet worked out how script pages translated to minutes of screen time. For episode 1, he slowed everything down to get a ten minute runtime, making that episode notably slower-paced than all the others. Then for episodes 2 and 3, he inserted new material at the last minute to make them ten minutes long without changing the pace of the rest of the episode.
  • Early episodes featured more supporting characters whose gender matched their voice actor's. Episode 10 seems to be the point where Getschman started deliberately embracing the Vocal Dissonance and casting female VA's to voice all the stallions.
• Embarrassing First Name: Dumb-Bell.
  Dumb-Bell: It's Dumb-Bell! My name is Dumb-Bell! ... God, my name sucks.
• Emergency Weapon: According to "Raiders of the Lost Arch Nemesis", a unicorn's horn can be used as a stabbing weapon in a pinch.
• Emotion Eater: Cockatrices feed off of fear, and use it to fuel their dark magic.
• Enemy Mine: The buffalo-changeling alliance in episode 21. The two nations aren't on good terms, but they team up because they hate Princess Celestia even more.
• Episode Tagline: In Episode 16, the cast gets obsessed with a movie that just came out, The Snack. Conversations between ponies who've already seen the movie invariably degenerate into them just shouting "The Snack!" back and forth.
• Establishing Shot: Celestia and Luna's dialogue scenes always begin with a long shot on the Canterlot Palace.
• Everybody Hates Mathematics:
  • Exaggerated. None of the schoolfoals are able to fathom even the most basic arithmetic.
  Apple Bloom: The academy made so much more sense. "Pretend inferiority and encourage his arrogance". Simple! But two times eight? Egads, what the hell does that even mean?
  • A closer look shows that the children aren't completely incompetent, but are just confusing their operations. When Cheerilee asks what six plus two is, the students instead give the answers for six minus two, six times two, and six divided by two.
• Evil Overlooker: The placement of the villains and antagonists on the official poster is pretty interesting. The eyes of Discord, the most powerful foe in the series and the primary threat of The Movie, look down on the rest of the cast from the upper left, playing the trope completely straight. The other big bads, King Sombra and Queen Chrysalis, are in the bottom corners, surprisingly fitting their roles. Sombra turns out as just a Big Bad Wannabe. And although Chrysalis winds up the last villain standing, who comes within a hair's breadth of actually winning, she does so through deceit and subterfuge—not through acting overtly. Meanwhile Trixie is grouped with the mane six, right next to Twilight, foreshadowing that she's not really a villain. Finally, Celestia's placement in the upper right of the poster might be a nod to her being a Villain Protagonist—but the actually heroic Luna is right by her side, so it's possible they were both just placed there to balance the composition.
• Exact Words:
  • From episode 14:
  Twilight: Applejack, weren't you the one who said to respect all the ponies in Ponyville?
  Applejack: But she's not a pony! She's a changeling!
  • From episode 23 (after hearing a character backstory):
  Sweetie Belle: That was so beautiful.
  Scootaloo: Yeah. Makes me wanna give back to society, like, help orphans or something.
  Apple Bloom: You are an orphan.
  Scootaloo: Yeah, I'm starting with me!
  • From the Epilogue, "The Bird in the Hospital":
  Fluttershy: What's wrong with her, doc?!
  Nurse: Well, I'm not sure if I can tell you.
  Twilight: What? Is it really that bad?
  Nurse: No... It's just hard to pronounce.
  • The Epilogue episode "Twilight's Date Night" is indeed about the night of Twilight's date, but barely shows any of the date itself. It mostly focuses on the reactions to the date from Spike and his Gossipy Hens.
• Exploiting the Fourth Wall: In the Scootertrix universe, this is actually a superpower or form of dark magic, referred to as "The Fourth". Both Trixie and Pinkie can do this.
  • In episode 7, Pinkie deliberately invokes Offscreen Teleportation to get herself and Fluttershy down from the mountain top.
  • In episode 16, the main characters try to go see a movie, but tickets are all sold out. Twilight encourages Pinkie to use her fourth wall powers to get those tickets. So Pinkie deliberately creates a Plot Hole—in the very next scene, everyone has their movie tickets, and no one can explain where they came from.
  • Pinkie again uses her power to vanish from the CMC's cart in Episode 23.
• Extra-Long Episode: All the official, numbered episodes (corresponding to season 1 episodes from the original show)^note in other words, not counting Royal Correspondence episodes (which are all 4 minutes long), or the Scootertrix Shorts and other special episodes (which are simply as long as they need to be) are exactly 10 minutes long. Except for the finale, episode 26, which is just a little less than 26 minutes in length.
• Eye Scream:
  • In episode 5 of Royal Correspondence, Celestia fries both her eyes by looking at the sun through a telescope.
  • In "The Bird's Arch Nemesis", Derpy gets beaten up so badly that both her eyes fall out of their sockets. And she pops them back in all by herself.
• Failed a Spot Check:
  • In episode 9, Twilight somehow doesn't notice Apple Bloom until she speaks up, despite the fact that Bloom is clearly in the room with them in previous shots.
  • In episode 13, Applejack and The Bird both get "butt stickers" without realizing it, and don't notice them until the race is underway.
  • In episode 16, Pinkie sends everypony else out of the library, then scolds Twilight for discussing The Fourth in front of others who don't already know about it. Then at the end of the conversation, Spike chimes in—apparently he was right there for the whole thing.
• Fantasy Conflict Counterpart: Celestia declares war against the Crystal Empire on one front and and the Changeling Empire on the other—triggering the pony equivalent of World War I, with Equestria standing in for the Central Powers. Apple Bloom's Schlieffenpony Plan is modeled after Germany's Schlieffen Plan, and she paraphrases Prussian Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke (the elder) at one point. Equestria's loss of Appleloosa matches Germany's loss of their colonies in Africa and Asia during the war. And the Equestrian soldiers even wear pickelhaubes.
• Fantasy Counterpart Culture: The cows seem to be a bovine equivalent of medieval Scots, accent and all.
• Fantasy Sequence: Subverted in episode 10. As the parasprites get out of control, the camera zooms in on Twilight's face and the screen goes wavy. But before we can see what Twilight's thinking, we snap back to the present—then Twilight coughs and wonders what the hell just happened.
• Fast-Forward Gag: In episode 9, the Editor fast-forwards through the scene with Daisy and Lily because their voices are just too annoying. As he's fast-forwarding, there's an ominous shot of Plunder Vines overrunning Ponyville, which never gets explained or referenced again.
• Faux Horrific: In the Epilogue episode "Evil Applejack", Applejack's "evil" action is throwing away the uneaten portion of her meal. Winona dramatically begs AJ not to do it, and lets out a Big "NO!" as she goes through with it.
• The Fellowship Has Ended: The final episode involves most of the mane cast leaving to go on separate, new adventures—leaving Applejack and Twilight Sparkle as the only ones still in Ponyville. Fluttershy and The Bird go to live with the Seaponies, Rarity and Spike go back to the Badlands, Pinkie Pie leaves to wander Equestria indefinitely with Trixie.
• Flashback-Montage Realization: Used for a major reveal in the final episode. Princess Luna has a flashback to all the times she complained about events always seeming to magically work out in Celestia's favor, just as she realizes that Celestia has been literally using magic to ensure her crazy schemes always come out right.
• Flash In The Pan Fad: In episode 11, everypony is wearing a winter vest (with a matching armband) and will eagerly tell Twilight how great they are. Twilight is initially skeptical, but Spike eventually convinces her to buy a vest for herself, the very next day. When Twilight tries to buy one, Rarity isn't selling vests anymore, and says they're "yesterday's fashion".
• Flat "What": Almost every single named character in the series gets at least one of these, to the point where it's become its own Running Gag.
• Floating Head Syndrome: The official poster for the series features most of the cast's heads against a black background, with a small scene of the Equestrian army and war zeppelins at the bottom. To their credit, it's completely original art and not just a photoshopped collage like most examples of this trope.
• Flock of Wolves: In "Raiders of the Lost Arch Nemesis", Celestia doesn't just send Twilight into the human world, but the rest of the mane six as well, followed by even more pony spies as backup. By the time Twilight finds her target, everyone else at the school has already been replaced by one of Celestia's ponies.
• Follow the Leader: invoked Pinkie sings her song in episode 10 just to be like all the other, cool abridged series that have their own original songs with lyrics.
• Forced Transformation: In "Raiders of the Lost Arch Nemesis", Twilight contracts Larsonism, a disease that makes her sprout wings. This is a bad thing because the wings are a significant drain on Twilight's magic, leaving her unable to cast any spells.
• Foreign Queasine: "Baked spaghetti noodles", a common dish from the Badlands and Rarity's Trademark Favorite Food. Unlike Real Life baked spaghetti dishes, the Badlands version involves baking completely raw noodles in the oven; they're expected to catch on fire and burn for a few minutes. Surprisingly, when Applejack finally tries the dish, she winds up enjoying it.
• Foreshadowing:
  • Multiple characters make references to a growing malevolent force in the south throughout the first ten episodes.
  • In episode 7, Pinkie Pie wonders why there's still smoke coming from the mountain after the dragon has left. Most viewers would take it as just a lampshading of the limited animation the series has to work with. Episode 11, however, reveals that this was actually King Sombra in his incorporeal smoke form.
  • Also in episode 7, Fluttershy claims she left Cloudsdale because "I like to live on the edge, man!" which seems absurd, since she's afraid of everything. Episode 16 reveals that Fluttershy really is a fearless daredevil when she's at high altitudes. The thicker atmosphere near the ground affects her brain and is the real reason she's afraid so often.
  • In episode 9, Applejack tells Twilight that Apple Bloom attends a prestigious foreign academy. At the time, this seems like a throwaway gag to explain her English accent; however, in episode 12 we discover that it's a military academy, and that Bloom is actually one of Celestia's top generals.
  • In episode 12, Sweetie Belle wonders about the possibility of an unnamed friend spying on the changelings for the Equestrian military, again. In Episode 14, we discover that Rarity is the friend in question.
  • Also in episode 12, Apple Bloom names her strategy for fighting a war on two fronts the Schlieffenpony Plan, a reference to Germany's World War I strategy, the Schlieffen Plan. The real-life plan failed because the Germans got bogged down on the western front. In episode 18, the pony version also breaks down, because the war with Sombra takes longer than expected.
  • Again in episode 12, Scootaloo's proposed war strategy is a large-scale Defensive Feint Trap, but this gets rejected in favor of Apple Bloom's Schlieffenpony Plan. In episode 18, Flash Sentry pulls off a smaller-scale version of that same trap, with great success.
  • In episode 13, Spike casually mentions that baked spaghetti noodles (a food previously offered by Rarity) are a common dish in the Badlands; a clue that Rarity herself is from the Badlands, as we discover in Episode 14.
  • The Bird briefly mentions her arch-nemesis in Episode 16, but doesn't name her. Her identity is subsequently revealed in the special episode "The Bird's Arch-Nemesis".
  • In episode 20, Photo Finish comments on various ponies' "auras", and specifically mentions "I've never felt anything like it" in response to both Rarity and Fluttershy. Rarity is a known changeling. Photo Finish's reaction is the first clue that the "Fluttershy" in this scene is also a changeling.
  • Throughout the series, Luna repeatedly complains about how things inexplicably always work out for Celestia in spite of her bizarre, irresponsible decision-making habits. Every time, she specifically says that "everything magically works out for her" (or a variant thereof). The exact wording takes on newfound significance in the series finale, as Luna realizes that it really was magic — specifically, a spell of Celestia's that made everything work out in her favor.
• Forgot About His Powers:
  • The whole plot of episode 21 hinges on Luna forgetting that she could use her Dream Walker powers to meet with foreign leaders without leaving Canterlot, and sending the Elements of Harmony to negotiate in her place.
  • In "Twilight's Punishment", Twilight can almost certainly just teleport away from her captors, but she's apparently too surprised at this situation to think of it.
• The Fourth Wall Will Not Protect You:
  • Well, it didn't protect the show's editor from Pinkie.
  • Trixie also addresses the audience directly and rather malevolently, in episode 6.
  • At the end of episode 24 the mysterious voice in The Stinger directly speaks to the viewers a few times.
• Freak Out: It's subdued, but at the close of episode 4, Applejack has clearly had some kind of internal crisis, and can be seen struggling to deal with it in following episodes.
• The Freelance Shame Squad: In episode 10, the palace guards react with overblown awe when Celestia and Luna diss each other. ^note Using audio from the memetic "Wombo Combo" video, no less. In episode 11, the guards somehow show up in Ponyville and have the same overblown reaction every time somepony unintentionally disses Twilight's winter outfit. For some reason, only Twilight notices them. The guards also make one last appearance in episode 14, reacting to the race.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus: Two in episode 9. When Celestia and Luna insult other Abridged Series directors, there's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it caption reassuring everyone that Getschman is actually a fan of those series. And when The Editor fast-forwards the video, the sped-up footage includes a shot of giant, black vines invading Ponyville.
• Fridge Brilliance: In-Universe, the film The Snack has layers and layers of meaning that only become apparent when you think about the movie afterwards. Allegedly.
  The Bird: Fluttershy, think about what happened, in the movie, for a second.
  Fluttershy: Uh, okay.
  The Bird: ... The Snack.
  Fluttershy: [gasps] Wait, what? Oh my g— Wha— But that means—! And he was—!
  The Bird: Exactly.
  Fluttershy: Aw, it all makes sense now, man!
• Furry Reminder:
  • As a bit of a Black Comedy Running Gag, several characters mention that the only treatment for a broken leg is a bullet to the head.
  • In "Two Weeks Later", Celestia wonders what she'll eat after she gets kicked out of the castle, and Luna has to remind her that she's a horse and can just eat grass off the ground.
• Gag Echo:
  • When The Bird talks to The Editor in episode 5, she wonders if the floating text is "the words of some all-powerful, mystic being." Twilight uses the same phrase in episode 16, when she sees Pinkie talking with The Editor.
  • In episode 11, Spike's low opinion of Twilight's winter wear is echoed multiple times throughout the episode.
  • In episode 12, Celestia originally describes her hire-children-as-generals plan as "insane...-ly brilliant", a phrase that is repeated by Rarity in episode 20 (and again by an enemy spy in that same episode), even though she couldn't possibly know that Celestia had said this.
  • In episode 14, Spike speculates about the possibility of exploiting Meaningful Names, and suggests naming a pony Inventor Of The Cure For Pony Pox. In episode 23, Granny Smith wishes she had named her own daughter Curer Of Pony Pox.
  • In episode 15, Celestia claims that if Discord ever escapes, she'll taunt him, "Ha! You gnome! You were my lawn ornament!" In The Movie, she actually says precisely that while Discord is getting petrified by the Elements.
• Geo Effects: In episode 18, a big reason why the battle against the Crystal Empire goes pear-shaped so quickly is because the ponies aren't used to fighting in winter conditions, while the zombies aren't affected by the cold. Eventually, Apple Bloom neutralizes this by asking Celestia to warm up the Crystal Empire a bit.
• The Ghost: Kevin Bacon plays a major role in episode 13, without appearing on-screen at all.
• Gilligan Cut:
  • In episode 9, Twilight insists that Princess Celestia is too busy to deal with the episode's problem herself. One cut to Canterlot later, we get to see what Celestia is actually doing.^note Arguing with Luna about who the worst Abridged Series director is.
  • The gag gets a Call-Back in Episode 26. Pinkie Pie says "Maybe everyone at the Castle's been replaced. God knows what's going on when we're not there..." And there's a quick cut showing exactly what's going on.^note Chrysalis and Leslie are arguing over the ideal shape for pizza: circular or square.
• Giving Up on Logic: During the Running of the Leaves, Twilight simply gives up straight away on trying to figure out the nonsensical mystery of the butt stickers, so that she can have a relaxing, frustration-free race.
• Glad I Thought of It: Trixie does this repeatedly to Twilight in episode 6, infuriating her to no end.
• Glamour Failure: For the most part, changeling disguises are visually perfect (even if the changeling is a poor spy), but very occasionally, a green flash can be seen in their eyes. Rarity demonstrates this in the updated opening titles, and Harper's eyes also briefly flash green at one point.
• The Glorious War of Sisterly Rivalry: Celestia and Luna are constantly arguing (and Celestia is almost certainly the cause of every argument, intentionally or not).
• Going in Circles: Happens to the Mane Six in episode 7 when they're trying to descend Bald Mountain.
• Good Thing You Can Heal: Celestia reveals in episode 5 of Royal Correspondence that immortal alicorns can regenerate from any injury given enough time. This is why she's not too fussed about having carelessly blinded herself.
• Gory Discretion Shot:
  • Derpy sustains a number of grisly injuries in "The Bird's Arch-Nemesis", but it all happens while she's in a hole, and is never shown on screen.
  • In The Movie, we never see how Luna dispatches King Sombra, though her comments imply that she beat him to death.
  • Episode 25 ends with the Brainwashed and Crazy Pinkie Pie forced to reenact the gruesome murders from an infamous fan-animation. The episode cuts to black just before the first blow can land. The Movie opens with Pinkie Pie in some kind of white void, crying and begging for her friends' forgiveness—clearly implying the murders happened in between episodes, and Pinkie died afterwards. Then it's subverted when The Editor shows up and explains that nothing happened offscreen and nobody died. He just used his Editor Powers to end Episode 25 before anyone got hurt and then transported Pinkie here.
• Gossipy Hens: Charlene is said to be Ponyville's biggest gossip in episode 10. Then "Twilight's Date Night" reveals Charlene has a "whole gossip squad", including Berry Punch, Carrot Top, Amethyst, Roseluck, and Spike. (Fluttershy also shows up, but just because she's lonely and has nothing better to do that night.)
  Spike: Oh, c'mon Twi, they're great. You just gotta get to know them. Or, well, they normally get to know you, but...
• Ham-to-Ham Combat: Celestia vs Sunset Shimmer.
• Heroic BSoD: Faced with the failure of her grand strategy and the possible defeat of Equestria, Apple Bloom has a breakdown, and starts hallucinating the impending destruction of Ponyville.
• Heroic RRoD: The difference in air pressure between Cloudsdale and the ground is enough to cloud The Bird's mind and make her a lot slower at thinking and reacting to others. As shown in the epilogues, the pressure underwater, in the Seapony Kingdom, screws with her head so severely, it leaves her barely responsive to outside stimuli and only speaking in non-sequiturs. It's bad enough, Fluttershy initially worries The Bird is brain dead.
• Hero of Another Story:
  • Flash Sentry's battle with the changelings, culminating in a magnificent tactical victory on his part, is spoken of but not shown.
  • The Mentally Advanced Series version of Applejack goes on an epic quest to retrieve the Spear of Nidhogg. She makes new friends along the way and even finds the love of her life, who dies tragically in her arms. All of it happens completely off-screen, of course.
• Hope Spot: The Movie opens with The Editor contacting Pinkie, revealing that he saved all her friends from dying, and that everything is under control. Then Discord attacks and neutralizes The Editor, proving he isn't immune to Discord's power after all. No one's dead yet, but everyone is still in grave danger.
• Hostile Show Takeover: When Trixie grows stronger in manipulating the Fourth, she uses that power to rewrite the opening titles, replacing every character with herself and changing the show's name to Trixie the Abridged.
• Hugh Mann:
  • In episode 20, some of the changeling spies blend in very well, like Kyle and Leslie. Others don't blend at all: multiple copies of the same pony appear in crowd scenes, and one changeling walks on just two legs while he's in disguise.
  • In episode 21, Harper disguises herself as a buffalo—but owing to Shapeshifter Baggage, she can only transform into a very undersized buffalo. None of the real buffalo are fooled.
• Hurricane of Puns: Twilight opens episode 24 with a parliament's worth of owl puns. Spike isn't amused.
• Hypocritical Humor:
  • In episode 13, The Bird and Applejack make fun of Twilight's "butt sticker", because they haven't noticed yet that they're wearing butt stickers, too.
  • In episode 24, the ponies get to talking about weird names, until Spike points out that their own names really aren't much better.
  Spike: So "Ross Pit: Shark Hunter" is weird, but "Twilight Sparkle" isn't?
  • In episode 25, Celestia mocks King Sombra for monologuing in the middle of a fight. As she's ranting, Sombra zaps her unconscious, and points out that she should take her own advice and stop monologuing.
• I Am Not Left-Handed: In the opening of episode 26, Twilight has contracted Larsonism (a disease that drains her magic) a second time, and is at a disadvantage against Starlight Glimmer. Then Twilight reveals she still has all of her magic power, because she was simply faking her case of Larsonism. Amusingly, Twi doesn't actually use her magic against Starlight, and just continues arguing with her like before.
• I Am the Noun:
  Pinkie Pie: But you can't just make stuff up, there are consequences—
  Discord: I am the consequences!
• Ignored Enemy: In episode 7, the Mane Six spend so long arguing about their strategy for dealing with the dragon that he leaves of his own accord.
• I'm a Humanitarian: In episode 19, the Diamond Dogs kidnap ponies specifically to eat them.
• I Meant to Do That: Derpy accidentally breaks one of the town hall's support beams, but claims it was all part of her plan.
• Immediate Self-Contradiction:
  • Tirek trips himself up in his introduction.
  Tirek: "Is he friend or is he foe?" the pony wonders. Well, I can assure you, my friend, I am no frien—Crap, I messed that up.
  • In episode 24, as Celestia justifies her meteor bombardment to Luna:
  Celestia: The advertising campaign was just to keep ponies calm when they see massive balls of exploding ice, plummeting down towards the North. [beat] Plus, I made table money off the deal.
  Luna: You sold tickets?!
  Celestia: At cost, at cost... virtually.
  • In The Movie:
  Spitfire: This ain't some colorful children's fantasy! This is real life, with real magical flying ponies!
• Immediate Sequel:
  • Episode 11 ends with Celestia and Luna talking. Episode 12 begins seconds later, with them continuing the same conversation.
  • "The Bird's Arch Nemesis" leads directly into Episode 20—Fluttershy can be heard boarding the train for SkyCon allowing the changeling spy to take her place in Ponyville. In fact, the sketch from "The Bird's Arch Nemesis" was originally meant as the opening scene for Episode 20—but the episode ran too long, so Getschman chopped off that scene and made it a short instead.
• I'm Not Afraid of You: Since cockatrices use fear as their energy, they're uniquely vulnerable to the rare ponies who aren't afraid of them. In episode 17, Fluttershy explodes a cockatrice by reacting to it with anger instead of fear.
• Impersonation-Exclusive Character: In episode 26, Mare Window Maker and Stallion Window Maker (this universe's equivalent of Cadance and Shining Armor) turn out to be Chrysalis and one of her generals in disguise. The real ponies never appear in-person; it's unclear if they even exist or not.
• Imposter Forgot One Detail: Chrysalis makes a mistake with one of her disguises in Episode 26: she gets Starlight Glimmer's cutie mark wrong. The rest of the cast never pick up on this detail, so it just exists as foreshadowing for attentive viewers.
• I'm Thinking It Over!:
  • In episode 2, The Bird's loyalty is tested by apparitions of The Shadowbolts, who tempt her to abandon her friends. The Bird takes entirely too long thinking it over.
    Twilight: The Bird, though taking like thirty minutes! [Beat. Dramatic music stops.] ...still eventually came back to us and fixed the bridge.
  • In "Pony's Best Friend", pointing out that chocolate is toxic to dogs doesn't quite end the argument like Applejack thought it would:
    Applejack: Winona! The chocolate will literally kill you if you eat it!
    Winona: [pause] Hmm. What a conundrum. If I don't eat the chocolate food, then I won't be eating any food. But if I do eat the chocolate food, I won't be able to eat food later. Oh, what am I going to do?
    [Applejack and Twilight are both Dumb Struck.]
• Indy Ploy: In episode 19. Lampshaded, of course:
  Pinkie: So, what's the plan?
  Twilight: We go in, and get Rarity back.
  Pinkie: Actually, that's more of an objective. A plan would be a set of actions we would take—
  Twilight: No time! Diamond Dogs eat ponies. Even changeling ponies.
  Pinkie: Point taken.
• In-Joke: Every discussion of The Snack in Episode 16. The ponies who've seen the movie just repeatedly shout "The Snack!" at each other, or discuss the plot as vaguely as possible, and make no effort to explain the movie to anyone who hasn't seen it. They can't even give a straight answer when someone asks what The Snack is about.
• In Medias Res:
  • Episode 7 opens with the Mane Six at the top of a mountain, preparing to face a dragon, having just completed a long, dangerous journey to get there. Essentially, the episode is "Dragonshy" in reverse.
  • Episode 19 opens with the ponies at the library, talking about nothing in particular. Spike rushes in and announces Rarity was kidnapped. There's a flashback to show the kidnapping, then the others rush off to rescue her.
  • Episode 26 begins with the Mane Six in the middle of a mission from Celestia—and imprisoned by Starlight Glimmer, after apparently failing a test she subjected them to.
• Insane Troll Logic:
  • In episode 4, Applejack goes to crazy lengths to insist she's growing mangoes, not apples.
  Twilight: Applejack! There are apples on your flank! The word "apple" is in your name! You're growing apples!
  Applejack: Oh, no, Twilight. No, you see, my name's just a bad joke.
  Twilight: What?
  Applejack: No, really, it's a pun. Listen: maaaaaaaango. Maaaangoooooooo—
  Twilight: Shut up!
  Applejack: No, it's not a pun, it's something else.
  • Pinkie, of all ponies, indulges in this in episode 13, when trying to explain the disappearing/reappearing racer stickers:
  Pinkie: Well, maybe it's some sort of an... illusion. You know, this one time I thought these trees were llamas, but instead they were just high-powered attorneys.
  Spike: Wow, I... I don't know what to say to that.
• Insistent Terminology:
  • Rarity always corrects "noodles" to "spaghetti noodles". (In reality, there's no consensus on the distinction between spaghetti and noodles). Spike makes the same correction in episode 13.
  • Celestia is very insistent on the correct pronunciation of "Grand Galloping Gala" (although it's also likely that she's doing it on purpose to mess with Luna).
  • In Episode 26:
  Apple Bloom: Maybe we'd have a little clubhouse, or something.
  Sweetie Belle: Don't we already have a clubhouse?
  Apple Bloom: No, that is Central Command!
  Sweetie Belle: ...But if we change the curtains, though?
  Apple Bloom: Oh, yes, that could possibly work.
• Interactive Movie: Scootertrix the Abridged: The Movie is set up like this—a series of short segments, each ending with a choice of which segment to watch next (via the YouTube end cards, and occasionally through the i-cards and text links in the video description). Interestingly, all the story paths converge on the same ending, and every path happens in canon and affects the ending, even the ones you didn't choose—so it's less "Choose Your Own Adventure" and more "Choose which parts of the adventure you want to see". See the Recap page for a guide to navigating the movie.
• Interquel: The Bronycon 2018 special "Raiders of the Lost Arch Nemesis" came out after Episode 24, but is set between Episode 22 and "The Return of Lord Tirek". The Royal Correspondence episodes 11, 13, 15, 17, and 19 are also set between earlier episodes. Fortunately, the official Scootertrix playlist has the episodes in the correct chronological order, rather than release order.
• Interservice Rivalry: In episode 17, Generals Bloom and Loo get into a heated argument over the relative strength of Earth Pony and Pegasus branches of the military.
• In-Universe Factoid Failure: "Pony's Best Friend" shows that Twilight's completely unaware that chocolate is toxic to dogs. She would have given some to Winona if Applejack weren't there to stop her. AJ even calls Twilight out for not knowing this, insisting it's a "common fact" that everyone knows.
• Iris Out: Inverted. Starting with episode 19, the new title sequence ends by opening up like an iris to reveal the next scene.
• Irony:
  • As Twilight points out in episode 2, Nightmare Moon's plan to cause eternal night would just turn the entire planet into a barren wasteland. "Kind of like the moon."
  • Applejack is the Element of Honesty, but she's lying to herself about growing apples.
  • Fluttershy left Cloudsdale, the safest and most boring city in Equestria, because she was looking for danger and thrills. There are plenty of each on the ground—but the air screws with her head, so now she's just too scared.
  • Princess Celestia is beloved by her pony citizens, even though she's lazy and callous about their well-being. On the other hand, she is hated by the various species of the Badlands, who blame Celestia for turning their land into a desert. But, as The Bird explains in episode 20, that isn't actually Celestia's fault.
  • In The Movie, the alternate universe ponies who return to help fight Discord, are the ones Twilight thought had abandoned her, because they all neglected to say they were coming back. Applejack from The Mentally Advanced Series is the one pony who did promise to come back and fight—yet she winds up arriving too late to help at all.
  • In Episode 26, the pony protest against the institution of monarchy is actually inspired and led by Queen Chrysalis.
• I Take Offense to That Last One:
  Spike: She spent forty bits on an owl, just to make owl puns.
  Twilight: It wasn't forty bits.
• Just in Time: Deliberately invoked by the Editor in The Movie. He saves Pinkie from Discord at the beginning of the movie, then admits he could have saved her at any point in the previous episode, but he waited until the last possible second to make it more dramatic.
• Kafka Komedy: Any plot Princess Celestia's involved with. Celestia's solution to any given problem is some combination of lazy, selfish, and insane, but somehow her plans work out for the good of all Equestria. Anyone (usually Princess Luna) who notices Celestia's craziness and tries to protest, will inevitably get proven wrong and be mocked for doubting the sun princess's infinite wisdom.
• Keystone Army: Sombra's necromancy spells have No Ontological Inertia, so his zombie army will just collapse if he's killed. Luna successfully pulls this off in The Movie. Celestia and Luna lampshade how lame this is—apparently The Phantom Menace (which also used this trope) is Sombra's favorite movie.
• Lame Comeback: Episode 24 has a self-deprecating dig at rival series Ultra Fast Pony:
  Fluttershy: And then I said to 'em, "Ultra Fast? More like Ultra... not Fast."
• Lampshaded the Obscure Reference: In episode 19, the Jessicas gush about how much The Candymare scares them, while Rarity just watches in confusion. When they're done, Rarity just says, "Umm... esoteric?"
• Lampshade Hanging:
  Celestia: God I love this window.
  • The Christmas Special pokes fun at the way character expressions often fail to match the overdubbed voices:
  Cumulo Nimbus: My god. She's so angry, yet she looks so calm.
• Law of Disproportionate Response: In The Movie:
  Luna: You enslaved an entire nation, and created an army of zombies from the ponies you killed!
  Sombra: [scoffs] You can make anything sound bad with that tone.
  [Slightly later in the same conversation:]
  Luna: [Celestia] was right about you. You do talk a lot.
  Sombra: Okay, now that's getting personal!
• Leaning on the Fourth Wall:
  • After spending several episodes—and several months of Real Life time—on the front lines, Celestia suddenly returns in episode 22. Her smug "Did you miss me?" is addressed to the audience just as much as to Twilight.
  • While hiding at Donut Joe's sugar bar in The Movie, Spike is certain that mane six will clear up the storm of chaos in ten minutes or so—the length of a normal Scootertrix episode.
• Left the Background Music On: Episode 7 of Royal Correspondence reveals that Celestia actually pays someone to perform the three-note "jingle" heard before every Canterlot scene.
• Lie Detector: In episode 15, Twilight hooks Pinkie Pie up to one of these in order to question Pinkie about her inexplicable knowledge of the future.
• Lighter and Softer: In comparison with other MLP Abridged Series, especially the more popular ones. Other series get a lot of humor out of reinterpreting the mane six as sociopaths, and/or turning Equestria into a technicolor evil empire. Here, the mane six are flawed but still clearly trying to do the right thing, and Equestria is beset by external dangers but still worth defending.
• Light Is Not Good: The rainbow produced by the Elements of Harmony dispatches Nightmare Moon in a distinctly unpleasant manner, to the point that Applejack flatly refuses to use the Elements again.
• Literal Metaphor: In episode 12, Apple Bloom scares Doctor Hooves away.
  Apple Bloom: Egads, what was that all about?
  Applejack: Oh, that was a doctor. Apples keep them away, you know.
  Apple Bloom: I d...What?
• Little Hero, Big War: Many episodes have this feel. Even after the onset of full open war in episode 18, the conflict remains mostly in the background, and characters are heard talking about it but not directly participating. Even the CMC, the ones most directly involved in the conflict, conduct all their operations a long way from the front lines.
• Look Behind You:
  • Allegedly, this is how Nightmare Moon was first defeated.
  Narrator: And then the older one is like, "Oh my God, what is that?" "What, where?" And then, ZAP! The older one zaps her while she's not looking. After successfully deceiving the younger princess, the older princess sent her to the moon for a thousand years...
  • In episode 12, Apple Bloom has to hurriedly distract Miss Cheerilee from the subject of where Sweetie Belle went to school (as her time at the military academy isn't supposed to be public knowledge). It's not very subtle, but it works.
  Apple Bloom: Oh my God... a distraction!
• Loose Canon:
  • The "Celestia and Luna React" videos on the Scootertrix channel feature the versions of Celestia and Luna from this universe—but the intro cards specify that these videos are "not canon" or "debatably canon" or "possibly canon [...] but probably not".
  • In the Friendship Is Pandering crossover segment from The Movie, the FIP locals assume that this crossover can't possibly be canon for their universe, and immediately sink into complete apathy.
  • "Two Weeks Later" implies that the original show is canonically part of the Scootertrix multiverse. For obvious reasons, the original show isn't going to acknowledge Scootertrix any time soon.
• Magic A Is Magic A: Unusually, the primary spell magic seen in show does not follow this rule, but the Wrong Context Magic known as The Fourth does. "The Fourth" is based on the power to manipulate the script, and therefore has to obey laws of narrative consistency; failing to do so may have dire consequences.
• Magical Profanity Filter: the show's Editor is a recurring character, and mostly uses his editing powers to keep the ratings low. Usually he does this by ending the scene mid-curse, so the characters don't even notice they're being censored. But if the characters cuss enough that he can't edit around that, he will just bleep them out—and they definitely notice then.
  Pinkie Pie: Whoa! What was that?
  Rainbow Dash: I don't know! I just said [bleep] and— It did it again!
  Pinkie: Oh my god! You got bleeped!
  Rainbow: Bleeped? Like, censored bleeped? How?
  Pinkie: Oh my god, that's hilarious! I've never seen that done before!
  Rainbow: Can you not say [bleep] here?
  Pinkie: Apparently not!
• Magic Versus Science: Unlike the original cartoon, magic explicitly doesn't make sense in this version of Equestria. In episode 15, Spike drops a Logic Bomb on Twilight by asking whether she trusts magic or science more. She can't answer.
• Major Injury Underreaction:
  • When the Elements of Harmony strike Nightmare Moon, they literally melt her brain. But she mostly complains about the fact that her melted brains are getting in her mouth. "I can taste it!"
  • After her fight with The Bird, Derpy ends up with all her legs broken and her eyes dangling out of their sockets... which she explains calmly and in excruciating detail from offscreen.
• Malicious Misnaming: In episode 22, Celestia keeps calling Fluttershy "Butterfly". She plays it off as a mistake, but considering what Celestia's normally like, it's almost certainly intentional.
• Malicious Slander: After Luna's victory against the Changeling citadel, ponies begin spreading rumors that Luna hates changelings and ordered the army to murder surrendering soldiers. The ones who started these rumors turn out to be changelings in disguise.
• Massive Multiplayer Crossover: The Movie. While fleeing from Discord, Pinkie Pie can visit the universes of Ultra Fast Pony, Friendship Is for Adults, Friendship is Witchcraft, Friendship Is Pandering, or Dualshade's My Little Pony The Abridged Series. And while she's deciding which universe to visit, Thrackerzod from The Mentally Advanced Series floats by. Meanwhile in Equestria, the breakdown of reality results in alternate versions of the cast all teleporting into Twilight's library (including ponies from The Mentally Advanced Series, Camaraderie Is Supernatural, Classy Raccoon Productions MLP Abridged, Ultra Fast Pony, Friendship Is For Adults, Friendship Goes Hard, and Bean Quest—and The Wise Owl from Pony Horror Abridged). And for the grand finale, the mane six team up with their counterparts from Camaraderie Is Supernatural and Ultra Fast Pony to blast Discord with multiple copies of the Elements of Harmony.
• Mass Transformation: How Princess Luna triumphs in episode 26. She organizes the mane six and Photo Finish to make a spell that strips every changeling in Canterlot (and possibly all of Equestria) of their power to transform. When Rarity casts it, the spell forcibly de-transforms hundreds of disguised changelings back to their original insectoid appearance.
• Mathematician's Answer: Photo Finish is blind, and thus can't tell how many people are in a room with her unless she asks someone. She makes a mistake in Episode 20 when she asks how many ponies are in the room with her, which fails to account for Spike.
• Meaningful Echo:
  • In episode 18, Apple Bloom instructs Sweetie Belle to "visualize the apples" as a mental aid for understanding the operations of basic arithmetic. At the end of the episode, Sweetie Belle uses this same phrase to calm Apple Bloom down after a panic attack and get her to start thinking rationally again.
  • In episode 22, when Fluttershy realizes she hasn't been living up to her Element, she uses the same wording Twilight did all the way back in episode 2.
  Fluttershy: I shoulda shown it, like... kindness, I guess.
• Meaningful Name:
  • In episode 14, Spike wonders about the fact that so many ponies have names that match their cutie marks / special talents. Then he speculates that ponies could exploit the system by deliberately naming a child something like "Ruler of Equestria", or "Inventor of the Cure for Pony Pox". (And episode 23 reveals that some ponies really do try to game the system in precisely this way).
  • In "Raiders of the Lost Arch Nemesis", Celestia believes that Sunset Shimmer must be her arch-nemesis purely because of their opposing names... and she's right.
• Meanwhile Scene: Celestia and Luna's dialogue scenes are almost all Meanwhile Scenes.
• Medium Awareness: It seems that all characters are capable of noticing their medium (for example, the appearance of Paratext), but most don't understand what it is they're seeing, instead mistaking it for some kind of magic. Only characters who know the secrets of "The Fourth", such as Pinkie, are aware of what their medium actually is.
• Medium Blending: One segment in The Movie turns into a comic book. As in, Pinkie and Trixie flee YouTube to get away from Discord and wind up in a comic on DeviantArt, and you have to click a link to read an actual comic on DeviantArt to see what happens next.
• Medium-Shift Gag: In episode 10, there's a brief live-action clip showing a few seconds from The Bird's favorite movie.
• Mercy Kill: Never actually done in the show, but referenced in dialogue as a Black Comedy Running Gag: Several characters mention in passing that if they broke a leg, they'd be shot dead. The closest they come to actually doing it is in "The Bird's Arch Nemesis", when Derpy breaks all her limbs. Pinkie Pie says someone should help Derpy, and in reply Mayor Mare asks if anyone has a gun.
  Pinkie Pie: But you can't just go around shooting ponies!
  Mayor Mare: Listen, Giggles, it's the merciful thing to do! I can't control our biology!
• Metafiction: All the talk about the Fourth isn't just for metaphysical weirdness, or a realistic approach to the Fourth-Wall Observer trope—it's also there for commentary on the nature of storytelling. When Pinkie Pie says that ponies can rewrite the Script, this reflects Jack Getschman's belief that a well-written story is one driven by the decisions of the characters, even when those characters push the plot in directions the author didn't anticipate. In contrast, Discord represents an author who doesn't believe in his characters' autonomy, who thinks characters can and should change to accommodate the story he wants to tell. He has no idea that ponies can deviate from the Script he wrote for them, and that fundamental misunderstanding leads directly to his downfall.
• Metafictional Device: Characters can actually see on-screen captions and text, as if it was physically present.
• Meta Guy: Gilda is unfamiliar with Equestria and spends her entire episode questioning why the ponies aren't exactly like Real Life horses. How do ponies pick stuff up without opposable thumbs? Why do they live in houses? Why do they eat eggs—aren't ponies supposed to be herbivores?
• Meteor-Summoning Attack: In episode 24, Princess Celestia summons a meteor shower to drop on Sombra's zombie forces. And she turns the event into a meteor-watching party for her little ponies (and even makes a profit selling tickets!) without telling them the meteors' true purpose.
• Militaries Are Useless: Equestria's Army is quite competent in the (mostly offscreen) war against the Crystal and Changeling Empires. But in episode 26, the palace guards grab the Idiot Ball, hard, and somehow allow Chrysalis to escape after she's exposed and surrounded in the middle of Canterlot Castle. This foreshadows that the guards have already been entirely replaced by changelings.
  Luna: There's like five hundred of you here! How did she get away?
  Aberforth: Well, she was very slippery...
• Mirror Monologue: In episode 14, during her breakdown, Rarity gets into an argument with her reflection in the mirror. And she loses.
  Twilight: Rarity, are you talking to a mirror?
  Rarity: No!
  Mirror Rarity: Yes she is.
  Rarity: Shut up, Rarity!
• Mock Surprise Reaction:
  Luna: So... you're telling me that every single zeppelin in our fleet had the exact same weapons malfunction?
  Celestia: Yes?
  Luna: At the exact same time.
  Celestia: I know. What are the odds, right?
  Luna: And every single one of them accidentally hit a movie theater that was showing a movie by Kevin Bacon.
  Celestia: Wow, really? That happened? Oh my... whoa, what rotten luck, right?
• Moment Killer: Episode 7 has a musical montage of the mane six traveling. It ends with:
  Twilight: This sucks.
  Pinkie: Aw, Twilight. You killed the groove!
• Mood Whiplash: The first half of episode 23, in which Celestia plays a silly prank on her generals, is lighthearted and comedic. The second half... is not.
• Motive Misidentification: In The Movie, Pinkie initially believes that Discord is trying to eliminate other wielders of The Fourth to prevent them from using their powers to stop him, but eventually realizes that she was wrong - Discord is actually trying to eliminate Element bearers because they have the only weapon that's canonically effective against him.
• Mugging the Monster: "The Bird's Arch Nemesis" involves Derpy deliberately provoking The Bird, and getting the tar beaten out of her the instant The Bird actually fights back. Revelations about The Bird's backstory in The Movie (that she's a retired Wonderbolt, and she defeated Tirek the first time he invaded) retroactively make it obvious that she was way above Derpy's weight class all along.
• Multiple-Choice Future: In a metafictional spin, Pinkie Pie knows she's a character in an abridged series and can see the future by Reading Ahead in the Script. But she also knows that the Script "changes all the time", in response to characters' choices: essentially the characters are creating the Script, rather than it controlling the characters.
• Mundane Utility: In episode 16:
  Pinkie Pie: You want me to manipulate The Fourth, the most powerful force in our world... for some movie tickets?
  Twilight Sparkle: Yeah.
• My Friends... and Zoidberg: In episode 2, Twilight easily matches each of her new friends up with one of the Elements of Harmony, until she gets to Fluttershy.
  Twilight: And Fluttershy... is kindness, I guess.
• My God, You Are Serious!: Twilight doesn't realize at first that Nightmare Moon is serious about the whole "eternal night" thing, believing it to be some kind of strange insult.
• Mythology Gag:
  • Twilight casually hums the My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic theme tune in episode 4.
  • The first song Pinkie tries to sing in episode 10 is the "Smile" song from "A Friend In Deed", but she gives up almost immediately because of her atrocious singing voice.
  • In episode 1 of Royal Correspondence, Celestia uses the memetic "that's an academy record" line from "Wonderbolts Academy".
  • The special episode "The Bird's Arch-Nemesis" cranks Derpy up to eleven by having her eyes not just derp, but dislodge from their sockets entirely. Thankfully, we don't get to see it.
  • Lord Tirek's creepy "is he friend or is he foe" introduction is quoted directly from the show... at least until he screws up the wording.
  • In Royal Correspondence episode 17, Celestia declares that having zombies as your only followers is about as lame as having rocks and bags of flour as guests at your party.
  • In The Movie, after complaining about how much King Sombra loves to talk, Celestia contemplates the alternative.
  Celestia: Can you imagine a universe where Sombra didn't speak? Or, says like one or two words?
  Luna: One can only dream.
• Mysterious Past: The Mane Six—possibly sans Twilight—and Spike all have these.

N-Z

• Never Found the Body:
  • In the "Find Trixie" segment from The Movie, most of the Wonderbolts squad are lost in the battle against Tirek, and assumed to have been killed by his laser blasts. The very next segment reveals they're still alive, but stranded in the Void Between the Worlds. Trixie uses her Fourth powers to send them home.
  • In Episode 26, Starlight Glimmer runs into the Inescapable Caves of Doom, so Twilight concludes "We won't be seeing her again." Starlight reappears later in the same episode ("I escaped!")—but she's eventually revealed to be Chrysalis in disguise. So the real Starlight is probably still trapped in the Caves.
    In the episode's commentary track, Jack Getschman says that if they were to make a second season of Scootertrix, Starlight actually would escape from the caves to menace the protagonists again.
• Never Trust a Title: "Trixie the Abridged" is officially a "Scootertrix Short", but it's only 9 seconds shorter than a regular Scootertrix episode.
• Never Trust a Trailer: The trailer for The Movie features an atmospheric shot of Sweetie Belle standing in an empty field of grass, which is never seen in the actual movie. According to Getschman, this was due to a misunderstanding of the script for the Friendship is Witchcraft segment, which actually called for a far more mundane still image.
• Nice Job Breaking It, Hero:
  • In episode 16, Twilight pressures Pinkie into using her Fourth Wall powers to solve the episode's problem. The resulting Plot Hole causes Discord's already-weakened stone prison to crack even further.
  • Gets metafictional in Episode 25 and The Movie. While gloating about his impending victory, Discord pauses to thank the show's audience and Patreon supporters, noting that he never could have succeeded without their donations and viewership.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain: Discord's first priority upon escaping is to kill the ponies who pose the most threat to him. Pinkie Pie analyzes which ponies he's targeting, and that's what tips her off that Discord is vulnerable to the Elements of Harmony.
• Nightmare Retardant: invoked In-universe: the cockatrice is a monster that feeds on fear, but its appearance is so bizarre that Fluttershy, of all ponies, finds it more annoying than scary.
• Night of the Living Mooks: King Sombra has a zombie army.
• Ninja Prop: The show likes to hide major foreshadowing in out-of-place details that savvy viewers would normally dismiss as just a footage limitation inherent to the Abridged Series format.
  • In Episode 7, the smoke lingers over Bald Mountain even after the dragon leaves—because in the original episode ("Dragonshy") there was no footage of the mountain peak without smoke, right? The lingering smoke was actually King Sombra, traveling to the Crystal Empire in his incorporeal form.
  • In Episode 26, Starlight Glimmer's cutie mark changes from an equal sign to a falling star with no explanation—because the show is pulling footage both from canon Starlight's cult leader episodes and her post-redemption episodes, right? The changed mark is actually the first sign that this is a changeling imposter, not the real Starlight.
• No Celebrities Were Harmed: Doughnut Joe's voice is based on Patrick Warburton.
• No Fourth Wall: The series has a strange relationship with the Fourth Wall. Awareness of it is treated as something akin to a special power, and different characters have different levels of success in wielding that power.
  • Pinkie Pie has access to the script, notices text captions, and occasionally argues with the show's editor, at one point even assaulting him (offscreen, during the closing credits). In fact, the fourth wall is so transparent to her that she sometimes breaks it by accident, which causes Twilight no end of confusion.
  • Nightmare Moon is completely aware that she's the main villain of the story; she's just appalled at how shoddily her appearance was foreshadowed.
  • Trixie treats her knowledge of the Fourth Wall like dark magic, using it to supplement her magical abilities. She doesn't seem to have quite the same level of access as Pinkie, however.
  • At one point, Celestia, Luna, and a royal guard casually discuss other MLP Abridged Series.
  • The dragon from "Dragonshy" decides to depart his scene early, knowing that he tends to meet grisly fates in other Abridged Series.
  • Prior to episode 15, Twilight Sparkle appeared to be most in the dark about the Fourth Wall, probably because it's funnier that way. The rest of the Mane Six don't appear to care one way or the other.
  • When Discord finally makes his appearance, he turns out to be the god of the fourth wall, with more power even than Pinkie. He can manipulate reality without visibly altering the script, completely block Pinkie's access to the script, and can deviate even further than others from the plot of the original episodes by incorporating fan animation clips.
• No-Holds-Barred Beatdown: Pinkie gives the Editor one in episode 5, off-screen, in retaliation for him intervening in the episode too many times.
• Non-Indicative Name: Singing Steve.
  The Bird: How are you doing, Singing Steve? Are you still singing all of your sentences?
  Singing Steve: No.
• Noodle Incident:
  • In the first episode, Spike tries twice to get Twilight to come downstairs to the party and see what Berry Punch is doing. We never actually find out what it is. It's then brought up again nine episodes later by Charlene, who still fails to mention what happened.
  • In episode 4, when Twilight and Applejack's argument gets heated, Applejack starts rambling about some unseen incident involving The Bird and a catapult. (Presumably, it was something akin to the catapult scene from the original "Applebuck Season".)
  • In episode 15, Twilight turns gray for one scene, and says it's the result of a magical accident. She's too angry at Spike to explain it any further.
  • One scene in episode 16 opens with Rarity midway through explaining what sounds like some kind of Zany Scheme... except that nothing in the episode has even called for such a scheme, let alone the one Rarity is proposing, which involves some bizarre Noodle Implements.
  • Sometime before episode 24, Spike and Berry Punch got into some kind of shenanigans together, which broke Twilight's oven (four times), smashed the bathroom window, used up all the straws in town, and got Ponyville onto the cover of Bad Decisions Monthly.
• Noodle Implements: In "Twilight's Date Night":
  Twilight: We are not ending up on Poor Choices Monthly again, Spike! If I find the plungers outside the bathroom one more time...
• No Ontological Inertia: In Episode 17, the cockatrice's petrification appears to be undone when it dies, as Twilight returns to flesh and blood without any explanation.
• Noticing the Fourth Wall: Pinkie fears that other people besides her might notice the Fourth Wall and realize that their existence is all just part of a show. Possibly this is why she starts downplaying her abilities in later episodes.
• No Title: Unlike the original show and most other abridged series, the episodes just have numbers for titles. "Episode 1", "Episode 2", and so on. (Shorts and special episodes do get titles, however.)
• "Not Making This Up" Disclaimer: In episode 5 of Royal Correspondence, Celestia has to qualify which of her statements about alicorn biology are actually true, since she'd been making up most of them to troll Luna.
• N-Word Privileges: In "Twilight's Punishment", the Committee of Owls takes offense when Twilight asks them "Who?", because that's a word only owls are allowed to say.
• Oblivious Guilt Slinging: Trixie isn't the only one at fault for Discord's escape, but her disastrous stunt in "Trixie the Abridged" plays a big part in destroying his prison. Then in "The Movie", she meets some ponies who have no idea who she is:
  Angel Wings: No way, that can't be Discord. It is said that he could only escape if ponies started messing with a dark and ancient magic.
  Trixie: Oh, really.
  Lightning Dust: Yeah, like if you had some clueless novice screwing around with it—
  Trixie: Well, whoever that was, I'm sure they were only pony, thank you!
• Oblivious Mockery:
  • In the first episode, Twilight's reaction to the book explaining the backstory is "Who the heck wrote this? A five-year-old?" She never finds out the author was her idol, Princess Celestia.
  • The main Running Gag in episode 11 is that Twilight's friends keep inadvertently insulting her winter clothing decisions, despite none of them having been present to witness them.
• Obsolete Occupation: Rarity runs a boutique selling pony clothes that she designs and sews herself. Unlike in the original show, it's an explicit plot point in Episode 20 that Rarity's business is struggling because the vast majority of ponies don't wear clothes. However, she's able to create demand (and save her business) by arranging a photoshoot of her friend Fluttershy modeling several of her dresses.
• Offscreen Moment of Awesome:
  • Whatever The Bird's trick is in episode 6, we only get to see the end result of it — although presumably, it's the same trick that her show counterpart pulled in "Boast Busters".
  • Twilight describes the journey up Bald Mountain as involving "hours of climbing, dehydration, and avalanches" — but because the episode opened In Medias Res, we never actually saw any of it.
  • Episode 18 features the war with Changeling and Crystal Empires finally starting, after several episodes of build up. But, we only ever hear CMC talking about it from their command center.
• Offscreen Teleportation:
  • Pinkie deliberately exploits this trope to get herself and Fluttershy off of the mountain in episode 7.
  Pinkie Pie: Anything's possible with editing.
  • In "Twilight's Date Night", Fluttershy is so used to teleporting into (or out of) Twilight's library from off-screen that she's forgotten how to use the front door.
• Oh, Crap!: In the cold open of episode 15, Spike gets caught red-handed in the act of sending hate mail to Celestia.
• Oh, No... Not Again!:
  • Episode 24:
  Twilight: Spike, you better not destroy the oven again!
  • In "Two Weeks Later", Pinkie Pie's reaction upon crossing paths with her arch-nemesis:
  Pinkie Pie: Again? I thought I killed you!
• Once per Episode: After Luna's return in episode 2, almost every following episode has at least one scene in which Celestia and Luna converse - often in the exact same place using the same animation footage. Episode 14 breaks the trend by having no appearance from Celestia or Luna at all.
• O.O.C. Is Serious Business:
  • In a meta sense. Fourth Wall manipulation can be used to rewrite reality, but even that can't force a person to act out-of-character.
    • In "Trixie the Abridged", Trixie tries to rewrite The Script to make Twilight say something she'd never say, and the resulting contradiction nearly destroys the entire series.
    • Even Discord can't fundamentally change a person's character or personality. When he rewrites Pinkie to make her kill her friends, it just functions as bodily possession, with the real Pinkie trapped inside her own mind and desperately trying to regain control. And when Sombra makes his We Can Rule Together speech, Discord changes Luna's answer from "No" to "Yes", believing this is enough to push Luna into a Face–Heel Turn. Instead, Luna just pretends to turn heel, and attacks Sombra once his guard is down.
  • In "The Bird in the Hospital", The Bird is suffering from some strange ailment in the hospital when her friends come to see her, which causes her to mangle her usual greeting response:
  Fluttershy: Hello, The Bird, for god sake, hello!
  The Bird: Aloha.
  Fluttershy: Oh no, she's broken!
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: In episode 22, Twilight's panicked voice sounds almost exactly the same as Fluttershy (as Getschman admits in the episode commentary). Particularly noticeable in the Scooby-Dooby Doors scene, where Twi and Flutters are both panicking together and both off-screen—Flutter's Verbal Tic is really the only way to distinguish between their lines.
• Ominous Visual Glitch:
  • Video glitches show up in "Trixie the Abridged", as Trixie's fourth-wall meddling causes reality to break down.
  • The video and audio glitch during the credits in episode 24, signaling that something is interfering with The Fourth.
• Opposite Day: In "The Bird in the Hospital", the nurse thinks The Bird has contracted Contradictionitis, which would make her constantly say the opposite of what she means. But the nurse isn't sure about that (and the mane cast already have reason to doubt his expertise anyway), and nothing The Bird says helps clarify the issue.
• Orphaned Etymology: Lampshaded in Episode 7, when the other ponies notice Fluttershy's use of "man" as a Verbal Tic and wonder what the word even means. They speculate that it's short for "manticore" or a mispronunciation of "naan" (as in the bread).
• Orphaned Punchline: Episode 19 opens with the mane six (sans Rarity) in the library, all reacting to something The Bird just said—unanimously agreeing that The Bird should stop being such a ninnymuffin.
• Overly Long Gag: In "Raiders of the Lost Arch Nemesis", Princess Celestia and Sunset Shimmer spend about 30 seconds repeating back and forth that Celestia is powerless against Sunset.
• Overly Preprepared Gag:
  • Princess Celestia leaves the petrified Discord in her garden—unguarded—solely so that if he escapes, she can mock him:
  Princess Celestia: Just think, if he were to ever come back, he'd be like, "Oh, Celestia. I'm so powerful now. I'm going to take you down." You know, and then I'd be like, "Ha! You gnome! You were my lawn ornament!"
  • In episode 24, Twilight apparently adopted a pet owl just so she could make owl puns.
• Padding: invoked In the episode commentaries, Getschman admits that some of his early scripts were too short, so he would make something up at the last minute to fill the runtime:
  • In episode 2, he inserted the Previously on… montage. (The original script used the scene in the library as the Cold Open.)
  • In episode 3, he inserted The Editor's Author Filibuster scene.
• Painting the Medium:
  • In "Trixie the Abridged", when Trixie accidentally makes a reality-breaking Plot Hole, some visual glitches appear—then a fake Related Videos screen pops up, so it looks like the episode ended.
  • The YouTube thumbnails for episodes after "Trixie the Abridged" have visible cracks running through them, signifying that the Fourth Wall is now well and truly broken.
  • When Discord escapes, ominous messages appear in the video descriptions on YouTube: "I'm here," below Episode 24 and "Don't worry, it will all be over soon..." below Episode 25. The Movie reveals it's actually The Editor, trying to reassure Pinkie and the audience. He leaves more messages below several movie segments, and even gets into an argument with Discord at one point.
  • The chaotic influence in Episode 25 screws up the opening titles so badly that they only play for a few seconds, and then the end credits show up in their place instead.
  • Crossover episodes use the conceit that different YouTube channels correspond to different universes. Any scenes set in the Friendship Is For Adults universe will be in a video on The Kanterlot's channel, and any scenes in the Ultra Fast Pony universe will be hosted on Wacarb's channel, etc., even when this means splitting a single episode's plot across two or more videos. So when the ponies go on a journey that takes them all across YouTube, the viewer has to channel-hop alongside them. And, at one point in The Movie, the ponies leave YouTube entirely—and the viewer has to follow a link to read a comic on DeviantArt to see what happens next.
• Palette Swap: Cheerilee refers to Scootaloo as "orange student", and to another student (who has Scootaloo's model but a different color scheme) as "Blue Scootaloo".
• Parodied Trope: Twilight and Fluttershy get trapped in a Scooby-Dooby Doors gag in episode 22, as neither of them can remember how the gag is supposed to work or how to escape it.
• Parody Assistance: "Two Weeks Later" features Andrea Libman from the original show, reprising her role as the canon Pinkie Pie.
• Perfect Disguise, Terrible Acting: Changeling spies infiltrate Equestria, blending in seamlessly thanks to their natural shapeshifting ability. Some of them, like Kyle and Leslie, are good at acting the part, too — but a large mass of background changelings are completely incompetent. Crowds fill up with "twins and triplets" as multiple changelings copy the appearance of the same pony and then congregate together, and one dope walks around on just two legs in public, forgetting she's supposed to be imitating a quadruped.
• Person as Verb: Starlight Glimmer does this with her own name. It's not entirely clear what she means.
  Starlight Glimmer: That's right! You've been Glim-Glammed, baby!
• Phrase Catcher: Mention the movie The Snack, and everyone within earshot who's seen it will repeat "The Snack!" in awed tones.
• Planet of Steves: In episode 19, all the Diamond Dogs are named Jessica. Rarity wonders how they know who they're talking to or about, but Jessica doesn't see any problem with it at all.
• Platonic Cave: Pinkie Pie believes herself to be living in one—that is, she knows that her world is just an Abridged Series on YouTube.
• Portmantitle: The name "Scootertrix" came from show creators Jack Getschman and Erich Zimbauer deciding to combine the names of their favorite ponies (Trixie and Scootaloo, respectively). Even the logo is a literal depiction of it: Trixie's hat resting on Scootaloo's scooter.
• Power Copying: According to Twilight, copying a pony's special ability isn't difficult to achieve with magic. In the series finale, Chrysalis' plan hinges on her being able to gain Sunset Shimmer's power, and Rarity uses the same trick to copy Photo Finish's power to the entire population of Equestria.
• Precision F-Strike: In "Trixie the Abridged", Trixie becomes the first character to swear without getting bleeped or cut off^note Word of God has said that this wasn't intentional; Getschman just felt the swear was too mild to be worth censoring.:
  Trixie: You haven't heard the last of me, Twilight! I'll be back! [quietly, to herself] As soon as I figure this shit out.
• Preemptive Apology: Pinkie, who can see the future, expresses her condolences to Spike moments before he is caught red-handed by Celestia.
• Previously on…: The second episode has one (a rapid montage of relevant clips from the first episode).
• Promotion to Opening Titles: Generals Bloom, Belle, and Loo appear in the revamped opening titles, beginning episode 19.
• Prophecy Twist:
  • As revealed in episode 23, Granny Smith named her daughter General Builder, in hopes that this would give her a special talent for construction. Builder then gave birth to Apple Bloom, who got sent off to a military academy and became the highest General of Equestria's military. So General Builder built a General, fulfilling her name in a way nopony expected.
  • In "Raiders of the Lost Arch Nemesis", Celestia and Sunset Shimmer both agree that Sunset's name is a prophecy of Celestia's downfall—but Luna blasts Sunset straight to Tartarus before anything of the sort can happen, seemingly breaking the prophecy. Then in episode 26, Chrysalis incapacitates and de-powers Celestia, using a spell she based on Sunset Shimmer's Celestia-negating aura. This leads directly to Luna getting so fed up with Celestia, in the epilogue series she strips Celestia of her rank and throws her out of the castle. So Sunset really does bring about Celestia's downfall, just indirectly.
• Pseudo-Crisis:
  • In the Cold Open of Episode 10, Celestia makes a surprise trip to Ponyville to arrest Twilight for sending her hate-mail. The punishment is death. The opening credits roll... then Celestia reveals it's all just a prank.
  • The final line of Episode 11 is Celestia saying, "I've just declared war on the Changeling and Crystal Empires." The first line of Episode 12 is Celestia saying "Well, war-ish." She goes on to clarify that Equestria is secretly preparing for war, but not actively fighting one.
• "Psycho" Strings: A synthesized version plays in episode 3, when the entire town chases after Twilight for her extra Gala ticket.
• Rage Against the Author:
  • Pinkie is not happy about the show's creator intervening in the story, as she's afraid of what will happen if everyone discovers that their world is just a show. At one point she follows through on her rage and beats up The Editor.
  • In The Movie, Pinkie's initially overjoyed that The Editor saved her... then she realizes the implication that The Editor could have rescued her much sooner, and she calls him out for waiting so long just to make the episode more dramatic.
• Rapid-Fire Interrupting: Twilight does this to Rarity in episode 7, to stop her trying to sell a dress.
• Reading Ahead in the Script: Both Pinkie Pie and Trixie have demonstrated this ability, and use it to gain knowledge of events that haven't occurred yet. Pinkie seems better at it than Trixie is.
• Realistic Diction Is Unrealistic: Averted constantly. Quite a bit of the dialogue involves awkward pauses or characters talking over each other, especially in scenes with Rarity or The Bird.
• Real Life Writes the Plot: The ending to episode 20 was originally going to introduce Queen Chrysalis; however, Jack Getschman fell ill during the production of the episode, delaying its release. During that time, he decided that he wasn't happy with that ending, and moved Chrysalis's reveal to a later episode instead. He also reworked Chrysalis' personality, so when she does make her official debut, she'll be very different from that unused appearance.
• Reassignment Backfire: A downplayed example in Episode 18. Scootaloo is the one who assigns General Flash Sentry to the Changeling Empire's border—but Apple Bloom, who considers Sentry her rival, gloats that he won't be able to steal her glory, since he'll be so far away from the Crystal Empire, where the real action should be. Then the fighting begins. Bloom's grand strategy for the war falls apart within a week, while the only good news from the front lines is Sentry winning a major victory against the changelings.
• Refuge in Audacity: Celestia's justification for hiring children to command her army: it's so insane ("...ly brilliant!") that none of her enemies would believe it if they did find out who her generals are. In episode 20, it actually works. A changeling spy learns the identity of Celestia's generals, but his superiors assume that the ponies fed him false intel.
• Related in the Adaptation: Applejack's mother is Granny Smith's daughter in this series instead of being her daughter-in-law. Though to be fair, episode 23 started production over half a year before "The Perfect Pear" aired.
• Remembered I Could Fly: After trying and failing to climb back down from Bald Mountain, Twilight suddenly remembers that they could just fly or group-teleport down.
• Removing the Head or Destroying the Brain: As explained in episode 18, Sombra's zombies can only be killed by destroying their head. This poses a problem, because Equestria's weaponry aren't accurate enough to get headshots consistently.
• Repeat What You Just Said: In episode 26, Luna tries to get Celestia's help while dealing with a nationwide crisis, stating that "everything always somehow magically worked out for you [before]." Celestia tries to get her to repeat this sentence to make her realize the truth: the reason everything "magically" worked out for her in the past was because she cast an actual spell to make it that way. After a few tries, Luna gets the message.
• Request for Privacy: Pinkie Pie and Twilight are the only ones aware that they're characters in a cartoon series, and Pinkie doesn't want anyone else finding out. Whenever the two of them need to talk directly about the Fourth Wall, Pinkie will ask everyone else to give her and Twilight some privacy (as in episode 16), or just ask Twilight to step outside with her (as in episode 24).
• Required Secondary Powers: Episode 16 reveals that pegasi (or at least some) are specifically adapted for the thin atmosphere of high-altitude cloud cities. Getting too close to the ground, where air is thicker, does weird things to their brains. The Bird is a lot smarter in Cloudsdale than she is in Ponyville. Fluttershy, who's scared of everything on the ground, becomes an annoying daredevil in the clouds.
• Resigned to the Call: Twilight is taken completely by surprise when Nightmare Moon returns, so in episode 2, her first reaction is to run away, back to Canterlot. Before she can leave, the rest of the Mane Six ask for her help and point her to the prophecy regarding the Elements of Harmony. She reluctantly goes along with them.
• Retired Badass: Donut Joe, owner of the Sugar Pub in episode 8, once got lost in the Everfree Forest and survived inside there for an entire month.
• Revealing Continuity Lapse:
  • In Episode 13, Pinkie Pie and Spike notice that various ponies' racing numbers (or "butt stickers" as everyone calls them) are disappearing and reappearing with no explanation between shots. Pinkie (who knows that they all exist inside a cartoon) tries to distract Spike so he doesn't figure out the truth.
  • In Episode 16, Pinkie exploits the fourth wall to create a beneficial continuity error: getting movie tickets for her friends, even though the movie's completely sold out. The downside of this Reality Warper power is that weakening the show's continuity also weakens the seal that's imprisoning Discord.
• Rewriting Reality: Characters with power over The Fourth can literally rewrite the script, giving them the ability to change voice, form, and even alter the course of events.
• Riddle for the Ages: "Snowdrop the Abridged" is about Celestia trying to find out who dyed her mane and tail pink as a prank—but she stupidly get fixated on Snowdrop as her prime suspect, then Luna talks her out of arresting anybody. We never find out who actually did it.
• Riddle Me This: Zebras communicate entirely in riddles. This makes them excellent spies and codebreakers... and not very helpful soldiers.
• Right for the Wrong Reasons: In episode 22, Fluttershy thinks she killed Celestia's pet bird through inaction, and realizes that she's been letting fear hold her back from showing kindness to those who need it. Fluttershy resolves to be braver and kinder—and she never finds out that Celestia's bird is an immortal phoenix.
• Royals Who Actually Do Something: Although Celestia's attitude to ruling can be lax at times, she doesn't shirk the responsibility of running an empire when it becomes important, and takes a proactive approach to protecting Equestria from hostile forces. Luna similarly won't stand by when subjects are in need of help.
  • In Episode 25, both Celestia and Luna are present at the Battle of the North to deal with King Sombra personally.
• Running Gag: In episode 16, Twilight becomes increasingly bewildered as to how her friends are managing to enter her house without her noticing. By the fifth time, she seems to have given up questioning it.
• Sacrificial Lion: In The Movie, Discord shows how much of a threat he is by trapping the Editor in a Fate Worse than Death so he can’t interfere with Discord's plans.
• Sadistic Choice: The buffalo ultimatum in episode 21. They intend to destroy Equestria's western colonies—but they offer to spare them, if and only if the Elements of Harmony publicly denounce Princess Celestia, which (as The Bird points out) would weaken Equestria's solidarity and undermine trust in their own government. The ponies decide to take their chances fighting the buffalo army.
• Sarcasm Mode: Nightmare Moon turns out to be pretty snarky.
• Sarcastic Confession: Celestia drops what sounds like another weird insult at the end of episode 10—but the big reveal in episode 26 retroactively confirms she sincerely meant it. To wit, in episode 10, Luna swallows her pride and asks Celestia to teach her how to pull off her apparent Chessmaster plans. Celestia flatly refuses, and her only reason why is, "I don't give ponies what they want. I give them what they need." Fast forward to episode 26, when Celestia admits she's been using magic to cheat her way through ruling Equestria, and says outright the Luna always was a better leader than her. So, back in episode 10, she genuinely did mean that Luna doesn't need to learn anything about leadership, and certainly not from Celestia.
• Saying Too Much:
  • Though Pinkie is trying to hide the Fourth Wall from other ponies, she frequently lets slip information about the future that she only knows from reading the script.
  • Rarity accidentally reveals one of Equestria's war secrets in episode 20.
• Schizo Tech: In the Battle of the North, Sombra's zombie hordes are accompanied by robotic walker tanks, while the musket-wielding Equestrian infantry are supported by zeppelins with forcefields.
• Scooby-Dooby Doors: In episode 22:
  Twilight: Oh, no!
  Fluttershy: What?
  Twilight: We're trapped in a Scooby-Doo door gag!
  Fluttershy: Aaaaaugh! What do we do?!
  Twilight: I don't know! How do they normally get out of this?
• Sealed Evil in a Can: Discord, sealed inside a statue. As of episode 15 and 16, the seal weakens a bit every time somepony breaks the fourth wall or causes a plot hole.
• Secret War: In episode 11, Celestia declares war on the Changeling and Crystal Empires in secret. (By which she really means that Equestria is secretly preparing for war, not actively fighting one.)
• Selective Enforcement: Whenever Celestia sends the mane six on dangerous missions that they logically shouldn't be qualified for, jobs that Celestia should probably just do herself, they succeed with flying colors. The one time Luna sends the mane six on such a mission (in episode 21), the mission fails.
• Self-Deprecation:
  • Celestia and Luna both agree that Jack Getschman (the series creator) is the worst Abridged Series director. In fact, this might be the only thing they've ever agreed on.
  • In The Movie, one of the many alternate-universe ponies who winds up in Twilight's library is the Rainbow Dash from Bean Quest—Team Scootertrix's short-lived first attempt at an abridged series. After this Rainbow speaks once, Twilight asks her to never speak again.
  • In the commentary track for episode 2 Jack Getschman jokes that it's no longer necessary to watch episode 1 at all: episode 2's Previously on… montage covers everything that's actually relevant from the first episode, and it's better-paced, to boot.
• Seinfeldian Conversation: Conversations frequenly get derailed into arguing pointless minutia, most caused by particularly weird comments from Rarity or The Bird, or by Spike's questioning the odder details of magic or pony society.
• Series Fauxnale: The Movie certainly has the feel of a Grand Finale, what with being a movie, wrapping up the long-standing arc of Discord's return, crossing over with countless other abridged series, having grander stakes than the rest of the series, and even featuring a speech about friendship from Twilight at the ending. But it does still leave the larger war and the subplot of Queen Chrysalis unresolved—so they can get resolved in episode 26, the actual Grand Finale, giving each character definitive endings to their arcs in the process (albeit endings implying further adventures for over half of them). Then that's followed by Scootertrix the Epilogue, showing what happens to the characters after those endings.
• Shapeshifter Baggage: Discussed. Changelings have difficulty transforming into anything much larger or smaller than themselves. Rarity can change into a Diamond Dog, but only for a few minutes, and even that is really hard. Harper transforms for several days into a buffalo—but she can only appear as a weird-looking buffalo with pony-like proportions.
• Shapeshifter Mode Lock: Weaponized in the series finale. Rarity targets all the changelings in Canterlot and Ponyville—and possibly all of Equestria—with a spell that permanently removes their shapeshifting powers, reverting them to their native black-shelled forms in the process. Even Queen Chrysalis is affected, as is Rarity herself.
• Shipper on Deck: In Royal Correspondence episode 17, Celestia gets really fixated on the idea of Luna kissing Sombra in the upcoming battle.
• Shoo Out the Clowns: Rarity's breakdown in episode 14 is rather heartbreaking, especially as she's usually the go-to for ridiculous humor or dialogue.
• Shout-Out: Now has its own page.
• Sibling Yin-Yang: Celestia and Luna are very different in temperament, and always end up at odds with each other.
• Sidetracked by the Analogy: In episode 24, The Bird is in the middle of a conversation, and tries to illustrate her point with a story about a guy named DerpedChaos411. Everyone else wonders why the guy is named DerpedChaos411 ("It was the first name that came to my head"), and this derails into a debate over the relative normalcy and weirdness of various names.
• Skewed Priorities:
  • In episode 4, the cow curse results in all of Ponyville's crops dying. Daisy Wishes and Lily Valley fear that everyone's going to starve to death, while Roseluck complains that her rose bushes died as well.
  • In episode 18, in the initial days of the war, the CMC seem more concerned with their math homework than with the war. Then, when bad news comes in from the front, Apple Bloom's first reaction is to gloat that her arch-nemesis Flash Sentry finally lost a battle.
• Smash Cut: The first episode ends with one.
• Smash to Black: Often used as a kind of visual Sting to transition between scenes.
  • Episode 15's chilling Cliffhanger ending uses one before going to credits.
• Sneaky Spy Species: Zebras are naturally suited to working as spies and codebreakers because they communicate entirely in riddles.
• So Last Season: In Trixie's first two appearances, Twilight bests her easily with her magic. But by "Trixie the Abridged", Trixie's learned much more about manipulating the Fourth, and Twilight's usual magic can't even touch her anymore. Then Pinkie proves to be even better at using the Fourth, and fixes all the damage that Trixie caused. And then the mysterious voice at the end of episode 24 runs circles around Pinkie while negating her usual script-reading powers.
• Somethingitis: After visiting the Seapony Kingdom, The Bird winds up hospitalized with a case of contradictionitis. The effects are unclear, but it's possible The Bird really does have an inflammation of the contradiction, which would make this usage of "-itis" actually correct.
• Sound-Effect Bleep: It's literally impossible to swear in the Scootertrix universe without getting bleeped, as the crossover episode "Scootertrix is for Adults" demonstrates. Presumably this is due to the actions of The Editor.
• Sound-Only Death: Nightmare Moon's death is obscured by the rainbow tornado produced by the Elements of Harmony; however, she remains conscious long enough to give an disturbing commentary on what's happening to her.
• Special Edition Title:
  • For the 2015 Halloween Episode, the usual titles are redone to show the characters in their Nightmare Night costumes. It also replaces Celestia (always the first character to appear in the titles) with Luna, who's the main focus of the episode.
  • For the "Scootertrix is for Adults" crossover episode, the other universe's Pinkie Pie steals Spike's place in the opening titles.
  • Trixie replaces every character in the titles of "Trixie the Abridged".
  • Episode 25's opening titles are so badly corrupted by Discord that they're barely able to play for more than a second.
• Standard Snippet: The Establishing Shot of Canterlot is always accompanied by the first few notes of Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor played on a pipe organ (referred to by Celestia as "the jingle").
• Stating the Simple Solution: In Episode 21, Princess Luna needs to negotiate with the buffalo tribes, but she can't leave Canterlot—so she sends the Elements of Harmony in her place. The buffalo Chief wonders why Luna doesn't just talk directly via the dreamscape; at the episode's end, Luna herself wonders the same thing.
• Stealth Pun:
  • In episode 13, Applejack tries to slow down The Bird by throwing a beehive at her. It's The Bird and the bees.
  • In "Twilight's Punishment", Twilight is detained by a gang of owls who subject her to 24 hours of horse puns. It's a pun-ishment.
• The Stinger: An extra scene pops up after the credits in episode 24—a sign that someone with a lot of power over the fourth wall is now tampering with the show.
  Pinkie Pie: What the hell? There's an after-credits scene? But there's never an after-credits scene!
• Straight Man and Wise Guy: Luna and Celestia.
• Strange Minds Think Alike:
  • The phrase, "We meet again, in the most unusual circumstances..." is apparently a standard part of Arch-Nemesis banter. Steven Magnet says it to Rarity in episode 2, Trixie says it to Twilight in episode 6, Derpy says it to The Bird in "The Bird's Arch-Nemesis", and Sunset Shimmer says it to Celestia in "Raiders of the Lost Arch Nemesis".
  • Episode 8: In all three subplots (Twilight, Applejack, and Rarity in the library; Spike at Donut Joe's bar; and Celestia and Luna in Canterlot), the characters all wind up talking about zombies at exactly the same time.
  • Episode 11 is full of this, with every character giving exactly the same commentary about the vests they're wearing. Naturally, this completely exasperates Twilight.
  • Episode 19 opens with the other ponies telling The Bird to not be a "ninnymuffin". Later on, Rarity (who wasn't present for that conversation) distracts the Diamond Dogs by informing them that Jessica called them ninnymuffins.
  • In episode 24, Princess Celestia and Twilight both independently use the phrase "ripe for making wishes on," to describe the meteor shower.
  • Also in episode 24, Twilight imagines the weirdest name she can think of, and comes up with "King Cocoon". Rarity points out that she used to know a King Cocoon.
• Storyboarding the Apocalypse: In episode 18, as all Apple Bloom's plans fall apart, she has a vision of the changeling army overrunning Ponyville.
• Subverted Catchphrase:
  • Rarity's usual line is "Do you wanna buy a dress?", but in episode 11, she's selling vests instead.
  • In the epilogue "Two Weeks Later", Rarity's mom seems like she's offering to make some of Rarity's Trademark Favorite Food, baked spaghetti noodles—but she's offering bratwurst instead. Rarity's a bit confused by this, and Mom realizes she misspoke. She meant to offer some baked spaghetti noodles after all.
  • In "The Bird in the Hospital", instead of her usual Verbal Tic "Hello", The Bird greets the other ponies with "Aloha."
• Synchronous Episodes:
  • The "Scootertrix is for Adults" crossover is actually two episodes, happening simultaneously. The episode on Scootertrix Studio's channel is about three Friendship is for Adults characters exploring the Scootertrix universe; the episode on TheKanterlot's channel is about three Scootertrix characters exploring the Friendship is for Adults universe.
  • Episode 15 of the main series shows Celestia punishing Spike for the hate mail he sent. Episode 3 of Royal Correspondence shows the immediate lead-up to the punishment, and then Luna's reaction to Celestia's incessant cackling afterwards.
  • Episode 18 of the main series and episode 9 of Royal Correspondence both happen during the first week of the war. The main series covers the CMC's actions, while Correspondence shows what Celestia and Luna are doing.
• Take Our Word for It:
  • Kevin Bacon shows up in episode 13 (yes, that Kevin Bacon), but he's never once seen on screen or heard speaking, despite somehow winning the Running of the Leaves race.
  • Apparently Kevin Bacon is the master of this sort of thing. In episode 16, his film The Snack is so great that everyone who sees it immediately gushes over how amazing it is. The audience never gets to see the movie or even hear what it's about, because everyone's praise is so vague.
  • When the war starts in episode 18, the fighting is never directly shown. The audience just sees the CMC's command center and hears reports from the front lines.
  • In the ridiculously happy ending of The Movie, Kevin Bacon shows up to hand out snacks, and signed copies of his movie The Snack, to all the orphans. Still off-screen, of course.
• Take That!: The opening to episode 15 takes a jab at the infamously ill-considered moral lesson of "Feeling Pinkie Keen":
  Pinkie Pie: Just because there are things in this world you can't explain, doesn't make them any less true.
  Twilight: What? No. That's stupid. That's a stupid moral.
  Pinkie Pie: Okay, fine, it is a stupid moral.
• Talk to the Fist:
  • In "Raiders of the Lost Arch Nemesis", Sunset Shimmer gloats at length about how Celestia is completely powerless to stop her... then Luna interrupts her monologue by blasting her straight to Tartarus with one shot.
  • Episode 25: having apparently learned nothing from Sunset's example, Princess Celestia starts monologuing at King Sombra (ironically enough, about how stupid he is for monologuing), and Sombra zaps her unconscious in the middle of her rant.
• A Taste of Their Own Medicine: In episode 20, Twilight silently breaks into Rarity's house, in the same manner that everypony had been doing to her in many previous episodes. She's rather smug about it.
• Tempting Fate:
  • Episode 18:
  Apple Bloom: We can allow some change in our plan. It's not like anything drastic has happened.
  [Smash Cut to next day]
  Sweetie Belle: The zebras surrendered.
  • In episode 22, Fluttershy thinks maybe taking care of Celestia's pet bird won't be so bad:
  Fluttershy: Okay, maybe I can do it. You know, but just as long as that thing stays in its— [notices the bird has already left the cage] ARE YOU KIDDING ME?
  • At the end of "Trixie the Abridged":
  Pinkie Pie: Just be thankful that nothing seriously bad happened. This could have been a real disaster.
  [Cut to the Royal Garden in Canterlot. Discord's statue is broken to pieces.]
  • In "Two Weeks Later", Spike says he came back to Twilight's library because he needs a low-stress environment. As soon as he he says it, there's a knock at the door—and it's Spike's Arch-Nemesis Celestia, who also wants to spend an extended time at Twilight's place.
• That Mysterious Thing: Half of episode 16 is characters talking about the movie The Snack, without giving a single hint as to what it's about, or what happens in it.
• There Are Two Kinds of People in the World: Granny Smith thinks otherwise.
  Granny Smith: Applejack, if you think the world is filled with "ponies who lie", and "ponies who tell the truth", then you're only half right. We sometimes lie to protect ourselves, and sometimes to protect those we love.
• There Is No Kill Like Overkill: In "Pony's Best Friend", Applejack deals with an unwanted orange tree (offscreen) on Sweet Apple Acres by burning it and its oranges to ashes, then "viciously" trodding upon the ashes and throwing them to the wind.
• These Are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know: In episode 17, Scootaloo claims she'll be discussing such things with Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle. She's mostly exaggerating to make Fluttershy leave them alone.
  Scootaloo: You couldn't handle the kind of things we do. Our discussion would warp your fragile little mind. Everything you know would become a living nightmare! Your brain would explode from the sheer horr—
  Apple Bloom: That's enough out of you!
• This Is a Song: In episode 10, Pinkie's song is about the fact that she's singing a song in an abridged series.
• This Is Reality: In The Movie.
  Spitfire: Do you think things are just gonna magically work out for ya? Do you think you can just sit around all day until somepony makes you into a Wonderbolt? This ain't some colorful children't fantasy! This is real life! With real magical flying ponies!
• Threaten All to Find One: In the episode "Snowdrop the Abridged", someone pranks Princess Celestia by dyeing her mane and tail pink. So Celestia gathers all her suspects (who are all children, bizarrely) and threatens to punish them all if the culprit doesn't confess. Then the blind filly Snowdrop has the misfortune of arriving late and asking what she missed, so Celestia immediately fixates on her as the prime suspect. Fortunately, the more level-headed Princess Luna recognizes how stupid all this is, and convinces Celestia not to punish anyone.
• Title Drop:
  • In episode 18, after Apple Bloom sees Scootaloo pull off an impressive stunt:
    Apple Bloom: Whoa! Those are some insane... scooter tricks!
  • The epilogue episode "Pony's Best Friend" is the first time an individual episode title gets dropped.
    Applejack: You think dogs love ya, Twilight? "Pony's best friend"? Well, they don't.
• Tomato in the Mirror: Discussed. When the topic of changelings comes up, Fluttershy panics over the possibility that she herself could be a changeling without realizing it.
• To Win Without Fighting: The war with the Changeling Empire doesn't end with a grand battle, but with one leader decisively outmaneuvering the other. Queen Chrysalis has depowered Princess Celestia, and with her network of changeling infiltrators has turned public opinion against both royal sisters. Chrysalis, in the guise of Starlight Glimmer, takes control of the Canterlot Castle and threatens to spark revolts all over Equestria if Luna doesn't surrender the throne to her. Luna's response? Drawing on the mane six's knowledge and connections, she has them create a spell to strip Chrysalis and all changelings of their shapeshifting powers. After Rarity casts it, exposing all of Chrysalis' forces, Luna explains that Equestria's military is already converging on Canterlot, so Chrysalis has no hope of escaping. Luna offers to discuss terms of surrender, and Chrysalis accepts.
• Travel Montage:
  • In episode 2, the journey through the Everfree Forest is presented as very brief scenes of the ponies overcoming various obstacles, connected by Jump Cuts. (Basically, it's every joke Getschman could think of for the journey, while completely skipping all the non-joke parts in between.)
  • Episode 7 has a more traditional montage: background music playing over scenes of the ponies climbing down the mountain.
• Tuckerization:
  • When the mane six talk about "weird names" in episode 24, a few of those names—King Cocoon, Apanx, and Ross Pit: Shark Hunter—come from Scootertrix's Patreon supporters.
  • In "Raiders of the Lost Arch Nemesis", Twilight contracts an illness called "Larsonism" which causes her to sprout wings; this is a reference to writer M A Larson, who wrote the original show episode in which Twilight gains her wings.
• Unrelated in the Adaptation:
  • Rarity and Sweetie Belle aren't sisters in this version. In fact, they aren't even the same species, since Rarity's a changeling in this version. They still live together and pretend to be sisters in public, as that's the cover story for why Rarity lives in Equestria.
  • Shining Armor (or Stallion Window Maker, as he's known here) is just a random stained-glass window-maker, and not Twilight's brother in this version. He also turns out to be a changeling, though it's not clear if he was a changeling all along, or if there was a pony Window Maker who got captured and replaced.
• Unreliable Narrator: At the end of Episode 2, we find out that it was Celestia who was narrating the Storybook Opening from Episode 1—which raises a lot of doubt as to just how much of it was accurate. Episode 26 finally confirms Celestia's description of events was almost a complete fabrication.
• Unreliable Voiceover: When Fluttershy describes her backstory in episode 23, she says she flew to the surface in an ill-advised act of bravado, where she was attacked by "the morph". As she narrates, the flashback shows she actually just tripped and fell, and a swarm of butterflies saved her.
• The Unreveal:
  • In episode 23, the generals learn all the mane six's backstories. But The Bird shares her story (which apparently included a satisfactory explanation of how she got her name) completely off-screen, so we don't get to hear any of it.
  • In episode 24, Applejack finally tries some of Rarity's baked spaghetti noodles, but we don't get to see them at all. The scene cuts away just before AJ digs in; then when the scene cuts back, she's finished eating and asks for a copy of the recipe.
• Unknown Rival: Dumb-Bell calls himself The Bird's arch-nemesis. The Bird doesn't even remember who Dumb-Bell is.
  The Bird: No. I already have an arch-nemesis, and you're not her.
• Unseen No More: Flash Sentry has a major presence in episode 18 (many of Apple Bloom's actions are driven by her rivalry with Flash from their Academy days, while Flash scores a major victory against the changelings) without appearing on-screen at all. Flash is also completely absent from "Raiders of the Lost Arch Nemesis", the redub of his canon debut in the original show. (This wasn't completely intentional: Getschman actually wrote a few scenes featuring Flash for this episode, but they had to be cut for time.) We finally get to meet Flash for real in Scootertrix the Epilogue: "Twilight's Date Night".
• Unwinnable by Design: Apparently, just before the start of Episode 26, Starlight Glimmer subjected the Mane Six to some kind of test, which they would lose if they touched anything besides a specific lamp. But there were multiple lamps, and Starlight didn't tell them which one they were allowed to touch.
• Vagueness Is Coming: It's not until episode 8 that we're given any indication as to what the "unpleasant thing stirring in the south" is.
• Verbal Tic: Starlight Glimmer's tendancy to end her sentences with 'Baby!'
• Villain: Exit, Stage Left: At the end of "Trixie the Abridged", Twilight and Pinkie don't stop Trixie from just leaving. Twilight wonders if this is such a good idea, but Pinkie thinks Trixie has learned her lesson.
• Visual Pun: In The Movie, while trying to speak at the same time as Pinkie, The Editor (who only communicates in on-screen captions) overlays a huge wall of text directly on top of her - literally "talking over her".
• Vitriolic Best Buds: There's some antipathy between Generals Bloom and Loo, whose different views on fighting the war put them at odds; Apple Bloom wants to win in the most practical way possible, while Scootaloo just wants to make the enemy suffer.
• Vocal Dissonance: Overall, this applies to nearly every pony in the series; mares have male voices and stallions have female voices. (There are a few exceptions, like Princess Luna and Sweetie Belle.) The crossover episode "Scootertrix is for Adults" implies that this is perfectly natural in the Scootertrix universe.
• Voice Changeling: Here, changelings are capable of accurately mimicking somepony's voice without having to physically shapeshift into them as demonstrated in Episode 19 when Rarity imitates one of the Jessicas to scare off the Diamond Dogs. Conversely, changelings can also speak in their natural voice while still transformed.
• The Voiceless: Despite being introduced and being present in every scene with his friend "Blank Flank", Snips never says a single word.
• Void Between the Worlds: The Movie reveals there's an empty white space outside the Scootertrix universe and any other universe, which may or may not be YouTube itself. The Editor pulls Pinkie Pie there to hide her from Discord, but that only works for a short while.
• We Are Everywhere: In Episode 26, by the time Chrysalis directly attacks, she's already replaced all the guards in Canterlot with changeling impersonators. She also has infiltrators throughout the rest of Equestria, spreading lies and stirring up dissent against Luna.
• We Can Rule Together: King Sombra makes this offer to Princess Luna in Episode 25, arguing that Princess Celestia is a crazy warmonger and unfit to rule, and that he wants Luna on Equestria's throne, not himself.
• Weirdness Censor: Ponies are remarkably good at not noticing inconsistencies and weirdness around them, until some outsider points them out.
  • In episode 5, The Editor inserts text where anypony can see it, and even tells all the guests at Pinkie's party that they're just characters in a cartoon show. Once Pinkie (rather forcefully) convinces The Editor to stop talking to others, everypony else forgets about those weird floating words by the next episode.
  • Spike is the only one who thinks there's something odd about the the disappearing/reappearing "butt stickers" during the Running of the Leaves.
  • Even Twilight isn't immune to this. She's the expert on Equestrian magic, but she never notices how arbitrary and inconsistent it is unless Spike points the details out to her.
• We Meet Again: This appears to be the standard opening line for arch-nemeses.
• We Need a Distraction:
  • At one point in The Movie, Discord has Pinkie and Trixie cornered. Trixie distracts him so Pinkie can escape—after Pinkie and Trixie both shapeshift into each other. So Discord thinks he's chasing after Pinkie, but he's actually chasing Trixie.
  • Shows up again in the climax. Three versions of the mane six shoot three versions of the Rainbow Death Ray at Discord. He uses his mastery of the Fourth to freeze all of them in place—though holding all of them is clearly a strain for him. Then Celestia shows up, distracting Discord just long enough that his magic slips, and the Elements of Harmony blast him.
• We Will Meet Again: At the end of "Trixie the Abridged".
  Trixie: You haven't heard the last of me, Twilight! I'll be back! [quietly, to herself] As soon as I figure this shit out.
  Twilight: Yeah! You had to have your little exiting monologue, didn't you?
  Trixie: Trixie's not talking to you anymore!
• Wham Episode:
  • Episode 14 brings a major reveal regarding one of the main characters, and is distinctly less lighthearted than previous episodes. It's also the first episode (barring the pilot and specials) not to feature a Celestia/Luna scene, and instead focuses entirely on Rarity and her story.
  • In Royal Correspondence episode 9, the war from the main series has repercussions in Canterlot, leading to a major development in Celestia and Luna's relationship, and the potential for Luna to finally earn some more respect. Again, it's distinctly less comedic than prior episodes.
• Wham Line:
  Rarity: Fine! I'm a changeling!
  • Later, in Episode 25, Discord reveals his plans for the Mane Six to Pinkie:
  Discord: I won't be killing your friends. No, I'm going to be having a little fun for once. You will.
• Wham Shot:
  • Rarity's changeling detransformation in Episode 14.
  • At the end of episode 15, Discord's statue cracks, as excessive Fourth Wall use weakens his stone prison.
  • The final shot of "Trixie the Abridged": Discord's statue is completely broken.
• What the Hell, Hero?: When Twilight suggests using the Elements of Harmony to defeat the bugs in episode 10, Applejack flatly refuses, having seen what the Elements did to Nightmare Moon.
• "What Now?" Ending: Twilight Sparkle's story arc ends this way in the series proper. By the end of episode 26, the Mane Six have split up, Spike has left for the Badlands, and Celestia is recovering on the moon. Applejack is still around, but almost everything else that gave Twilight's life meaning is gone now, leaving her unsure of what to do next. Twilight puts a hopeful spin on it, stating that the library is always getting new books—to imply that she expects to find new work and make new friends. Then the epilogue has Spike and Celestia move into her home while they get back on their feet, giving her some purpose.
• "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: Scootertrix the Epilogue: "Two Weeks Later", set two weeks after the finale, elaborates on the fate of the characters. Spike found the Badlands hadn't changed enough in his absence, so he returned to Equestria and moved back in with Twilight; Luna deposed Celestia permanently and kicked her out of the castle, forcing her to move in with Twilight as well; Applejack is still happy tending to her farm; Fluttershy and the Bird's move to the Sea Kingdom went horribly wrong and they went back to Ponyville; and Pinkie and Trixie are currently battling Pinkie's arch-nemesis, the original Pinkie Pie.
• Who's on First?:
  • In episode 14, The Bird and Pinkie Pie both mishear "changeling" as "changing", leading to a bit of confusion.
  • There's a bonus video where Celestia breaks the fourth wall to announce that Scootertrix has a server on Discord (as in, the chat program). Luna thinks she's talking about Discord (the petrified master of chaos), and Celestia does a terrible job clarifying.
• Who Writes This Crap?!: Nightmare Moon is deeply unimpressed with the poorly-handled foreshadowing of her appearance.
• A Wizard Did It: Whenever Spike points out the questionable logic often on display in Equestria, the only explanation he tends to receive is, "It's magic."
  Twilight: It's magic, Spike! It doesn't need an explanation.
• The Wonka: Photo Finish. She's a blind photographer—and apparently she gets around that slight disadvantage by sensing ponies' "auras". She also kicks her clients' shins for no reason. In spite of these eccentricities, she's so good at her work that she turns Fluttershy into a famous fashion model and saves Rarity's boutique.
• Won't Take "Yes" for an Answer:
  • At the start of Episode 14, Rarity asks Twilight yet again if she wants to buy a dress. Twilight says "Yes," for the first time. Rarity can only answer with a shocked "... What?"
  • The result of Sombra's We Can Rule Together speech in The Movie:
  King Sombra: Well, Princess? What will it be?
  Princess Luna: ... Yes.
  King Sombra: Then you will d— Wait, what?
• Words Can Break My Bones: As revealed in episode 23, asking anypony if they've seen a purple letter with a red stripe on it will magically compel them to exposit their backstory. Celestia trolls her generals by telling them a letter just like that went missing, so they'll ask around and trigger the effect.
• The Worf Effect: King Sombra earns a bit of villain cred by creating a nightmare that's impervious to Luna's Dream Walker powers.
• The World Is Not Ready: Pinkie hides the truth about the Fourth Wall, reasoning that it would drive too many ponies into depression or madness.
• Worst. Whatever. Ever!:
  • At the beginning of Episode 26, Twilight declares, "This is the stupidest mission we've ever been on."
  • Applejack's opinion of the Nurse in the Epilogue episode "The Bird in the Hospital": "That is worst pony! The worst pony on the planet! That was him! We met him! We met worst pony!"
• Wrong Context Magic: "The Fourth".
• Yank the Dog's Chain: In Episode 16, the Mane Six finally find a way to get tickets to see The Snack, only to learn that every theatre playing The Snack has been destroyed by malfunctioning military airships.
• You Are Fat: Trixie throws a few fat insults at Twilight in "Trixie the Abridged".
• You Answered Your Own Question: In Episode 26, Luna catches onto a major reveal this way.
  Luna: But now that you're back, you can fix this.
  Celestia: Luna, I have no power. I can't help.
  Luna: But you never really used your powers before. Everything always somehow magically worked out for you.
  Celestia: Come on, Luna, you can't be this dumb! Don't you see it?
  Luna: See, what?
  Celestia: Say what you just said!
  Luna: "See what?"
  Celestia: No, before that.
  Luna: "Everything always magically works out?"
  Celestia: Say it again.
  Luna: Everything... always... magically... [Cue the Flashback-Montage Realization.]
• You Can't Handle the Parody: Actually played rather dramatically, for a change.
  Twilight: Oh, I have had it. I feel like I can't trust you guys anymore! I want the truth!
  Pinkie: You can't handle the truth!
  Twilight: Pinkie! I have fought against gods! I have dealt with cow curses, plagues, famines, dragons, rabbits, biological weapons, and the insane craziness that is Ponyville! I think I can handle whatever it is you have to say! So, say it!
• You Can't Thwart Stage One: Amusingly averted in the short "The Return of Lord Tirek". Tirek's attempted takeover of Equestria lasts about a minute. The mane six confront him before he can absorb any pony magic, and immediately send him back to Hell with the Elements of Harmony.
• Your Door Was Open: Twilight's friends will often invite themselves into her house, much to Twilight's annoyance. Sometimes there isn't even a logical explanation for how they got inside. It becomes a Running Gag in episode 16, then gets inverted in episode 20, when Twilight inexplicably appears inside Rarity's house. In The Movie, Spike even admits that random magic might the best explanation for how ponies keep getting into the house without Twilight noticing. In "Two Weeks Later", Twilight confirms there was a leak in the fabric of reality—and she's patched it up, so now everyone has to knock on the door like a civilized person to get in.