YMMV / The Bridge (MLP)

• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Xenilla's Ambiguously Evil tendencies hit a new high when it was shown he saved Godzilla Junior's life back in Final Wars. Was it a case of The Only One Allowed to Defeat You or does he actually care about his "little brother"? Turns out he actually cares about Junior.
  • Arguably nearly the entire Kaiju roster is subject to this, given the little characterization most of them get in the movies. So far the creator's efforts at fleshing them out has been pretty well received.
  • After his fight against the team composed of Irys, Gigan, and Megalon; Grand King Ghidorah seems pretty calm after having his back sliced open. He then turns around and grants Irys' wish; which the lack of started the fight in the first place. Was it a case of Ghidorah being barely harmed by their assault and granting the request to avoid trouble from the Big Bad? Or was the injury indeed quite grievous and he was calling off the fight to buy time because they actually came close to killing him? Pragmatic Villain or Affably Evil?
  • Some have called into question the GDF's choice at firing upon Solgell Island with Dimension Tide, the event that started the story, in the first place. As we've found out Solgell was home base to the Defender faction of kaiju, who have no interest in attacking humanity, and have acted on humanity's behalf multiple times. Considering the good morality of this continuity's current Godzilla and Mothra, it can come off as an incredibly dickish move on the GDF's part to consider them acceptable losses and backstab them like that. True, it didn't end up killing them; but the GDF didn't know that when they fired. On the other hand, they might have been aiming at high priority targets like Destroyah and Xenilla; and Godzilla, Mothra, Anguirus, and Rodan being caught in the blast radius was an accident. ^note This question is answered in the spin-off The Bridge: Humanity's Stand. Godzilla and Xenilla's duel was generating so much heat that if it had been allowed to continue, it would have ignited the atmosphere and wiped out the biosphere. Marshall Stacker Pentecost considered the Godzilla Threshold to have been crossed and solemnly chose the option that would save the world. However, this is later revealed to be a lie.
• Arc Fatigue: The Winter War arc. The arc lasted for nearly six years in real-time. Sitting at over 450,000 words, 20 individual chapters, and a three-part special, it is the longest arc in the story by far. Even Tarbtano has admitted it's overstayed its welcome. While the arc officially ended with chapter 54, it nonetheless clocks in at four divided parts.
• Archive Panic: The main fic itself already has a prodigious amount of content, with over 800,000 words spread over 70 chapters (and counting). On top of that, there's also a great number of different spinoffs, sidestories, and supplementary information blogs. One of the fic's proofreaders eventually put together a master reading list to keep track of it all.
• Base-Breaking Character:
  • The Windigos. While few will admit to liking them, the broken base comes from whether or not they are fun to hate or not. One side believes that their utter despicability makes them an absolute joy to read about while the other thinks the writing for them is a little too good and makes it hard to enjoy them. Though it is almost universally agreed that Notus' death in chapter 51 was extremely satisfying.
  • Sci-Twi and Wallflower are even more divisive, having helped the Windigos do incredibly horrible things after Zephyrus tricked them into thinking he was benevolent. Are they sympathetic, well-meaning girls who have been wrongly manipulated by a malevolent spirit? Or are they arrogant imbeciles who blindly followed the word of a complete stranger without hesitation? Is the suffering they endure tragic and painful to read? Or is it a well-deserved reality check for their foolishness?
• Catharsis Factor:
  • After the many, many, many horrible atrocities he's left in his wake, seeing Grand King Ghidorah finally meet his end in a spectacular fashion with aid from the souls he's absorbed is definitely this.
  • After the living nightmare she's put Ki Seong through, Jeog's death also carries this.
  • Giranbo spends her entire two part Halloween Special being a monstrous, child murdering, sadistic irredeemable monster. Seeing Destroyah kill her with what amounts to the Oxygen Destroyer while she's as terrified as her victims were is incredibly cathartic.
  • Aria beating Human Twilight within a inch of her is considered cathartic by some readers who feel that being misled did not excuse her horrible actions.
  • Sunset and her friends overcoming their self-doubt and extirpating Notus with the Elements of Harmony is considered one of the best parts of the story.
• Complete Monster:
  • Grand King Ghidorah is an Omnicidal Maniac with a god complex. Traveling the universe for eons, Ghidorah has razed countless civilizations to absorb the souls of the fallen, increasing his own power. Enjoying mind games, Ghidorah also takes to psychically forcing worlds of people to turn on each other. Supposedly killing Monster X's wife and then continuously tormenting him, Ghidorah hopes to drive him over the edge into his Superpowered Evil Side, Kaizer Ghidorah, which he adores as a fellow destroyer. Attacking Equestria with his cohorts, Ghidorah brainwashes Starlight Glimmer into attacking Godzilla Jr., in the hopes the latter will become enraged; this may destroy the whole planet, but Ghidorah is fine with that, as this provide a good fight and remove a problem. While bored, he cruelly mind rapes Celestia until Luna forces him to stop. Forcing Monster X to turn into Kaizer Ghidorah, King Ghidorah leaves the berserker to attack his friends while he himself attempts to kill Godzilla Jr. When fatally wounded, Ghidorah tries to destroy all of Equestria with a Wave-Motion Gun as one last act of spite. A megalomaniac who planned to kill even his own brother, Grand King Ghidorah proves himself to be every bit as vile as his cinematic counterparts.
  • Jeog, aka "Beautiful Terror", is a monstrous, bloodthirsty Gumiho. Viewing love as something she can take by force by eating someone's heart, Jeog pretends to be a Kirin doe and gets adopted into the Cho Family, and then proceeds to kill several of them before being sealed away, only to escape years later to finish the job. She kills Cho Yon, Ki Seong's betrothed, and attempts to feed her soup made from his remains before trying to murder her as well. Chasing her victim onto a ship, Jeog slaughters the entire crew. Finally tracking Seong down, Jeog attempts to kill her honorary niece Gentle Leaf several times, and then attempts to rip out her new love Anguirus's heart and liver while disguised as her. While kept at bay by wards, Jeog tries to convince Seong to run to her death by making it appear she's holding Gentle Leaf hostage. During the final battle, Jeog paralyzes Ki Seong so she can be Forced to Watch the Gumiho kill Anguirus. Despite not being a kaiju herself, Jeog proves more monstrous than many of them.
  • The Bridge Halloween Special: Godzilla Earth is the proud and arrogant ruler of an alternate Terra. Seeing itself as the supreme form of life and thus able to do whatever it chooses, Earth would deem all life except itself unfit to exist and brutally exterminate it to replace it with a biosphere in its own image. Seeking to destroy humanity's remnants more out of bruised pride rather than to avenge its fallen son, Earth is confronted by four heroic Godzillas from other worlds and cruelly kills them in the course of the resulting struggle, including trying to have Showa Eaten Alive by Servum, and intends to brutalize their corpses out of spite. When they merge into the Leviathan and bring Earth to death's door, Earth attempts to suck the life out of the biosphere it itself created and kill all life once more in a selfish attempt to preserve its own. An ego-driven mass murderer, Godzilla Earth would haunt Junior and fuel his fear of what he could become for years to come.
  • The Bridge Sound Of Thunder: Empress Mio Odiato Cadenza is the Mirror Universe version of Princess Cadence, and partner-in-crime to Mirror Godzilla Junior and Battra Lea. After they aided in her escape, she assisted them in an attempt to destroy Canterlot and other atrocities. She then led them to King Aspen's Thicket, resulting in a massacre by the villains as they claimed it as their base of operations. Setting to work on a way to unleash her kaiju allies on Equestria, permanently in their true forms, Cadenza kidnaps, experiments on, and murders ponies, changelings, and deer. A rampage on the heavily populated Manehattan is their next intended attack, something that comes to pass when Junior uses the fruits of her experiments to attack the city at the climax. When the prospect of making Duchess Chrysalis's student Starlight Glimmer her next victim comes about, Cadenza is ecstatic at the chance to take sadistic Revenge by Proxy on her nemesis, gleefully taunting and mocking her captive as she prepares. A self-described "cold-hearted wretch who causes hatred and grief", Cadenza manages to be even more of a monster than her kaiju allies, as she lacks what few mitigating factors either has.
  • Humanity's Stand: Gabara the Ancient is an ancient tyrant who ruled Japan in a sadistic reign of terror until he was sealed away. As his seal begins to break, he psychically tortures the then-infant Godzilla Jr. with nightmares. Years later, he begins to Mind Rape psychics with cruel nightmares that begin to inflict physical damage, taking it especially slow and torturous with a young boy named Damien out of spite for Miki Saegusa managing to best him. When Damien sees into his mind, Gabara brutally murders him with his own worst fear. During his showdown with the now-adult Godzilla Jr., Gabara attempts to torture the heroic kaiju to death in every sense of the word using his Soul Lightning. After being killed by Jr., Gabara attempts to possess his own descendant Ichiro to continue his rampage. Even with his soul destroyed by Ichiro's will, Gabara's lingering malevolence corrupts the kindhearted child into a lazy jerk. A cruel and psychopathic tyrant, Gabara's only goal is to sadistically torment every creature he comes across.
• Continuity Lock-Out: While it is to be expected, given this is a crossover, there have been efforts taken to avoid this. The author frequently posts entries in his blog to catch less informed up to speed about the basic premise, including a time line, profiles for the major kaiju roster; and an active Q/A. So far it seems to work, with a good portion of the reader base being G-fans and MLP fans with little knowledge of the other series before The Bridge.
• Crazy Is Cool:
  • The April Fools special in a nutshell.
  • Pinkie Pie managing to finish saving Xenilla and Junior from falling from orbit by breaking everyone's fall with a giant cake.
• Crossover Ship: Hints from various parties aside, Aria Blaze and Monster X officially become an item.
  • Godzilla Junior and Princess Luna eventually become an item after several years of teasing out of universe.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Several, many of which are unexpected
  • The quartet of villainous kaiju composed of Hyper Gyaos/Irys, Monster X, Gigan, and Megalon. After being the protagonists for the holiday specials, all four are near universally adored by the reader base for being sympathetic or likable bad guys. Monster X is even the core kaiju of the Enjin arc, the first kaiju out of the core 6 to star in a story arc.
  • Blade Dancer, holy guacamole Blade Dancer! Word of God has it that she was supposed to just be a one off character in the guards group to give Godzilla some extra interaction. Fans showed so much overwhelming support for her that she popped up several more times now and arguably has more fan art of her than half the cast in the story's fanworks. Not bad for a submission to a Free-To-Use-OC group.
    • She becomes the deuteragonist of the Crystal Empire arc.
  • The story's fairly unique take on Destroyah has been very well received amongst the readers, despite going off in very different directions as other works using the character have traditionally done. In a popularity poll she ranked as the second highest scoring kaiju despite not having a full arc devoted to her and mostly appearing in chapters under a split billing.
  • Ki Seong, the kirin that Anguirus meets and later forms a relationship with has been subject to numerous fan art.
  • For many, The Bridge's incarnation of Kaizer Ghidorah is this. See Rescued from the Scrappy Heap.
  • Aria Blaze was largely considered the least appealing siren by the fandom. However after her starring role in the Enjin arc, she and her Super Mode have more fans.
  • The story can be reliably credited with getting Azusa Gojo a lot more attention in Godzilla fan works. Her status as the catalyst for Godzilla Junior becoming the Big Good by being his adoptive mother endeared her to many. A first appearance in flashbacks lead to a chapter she got to visit Equestria that is widely considered one of the best parts of the story.
  • Wysteria with gusto after the Legacy of Everfree special. She was previously a total unknown, being a little known Gen 3 character the story retooled as as Gloriosa Daisy's mother. Her personality, unashamedly heroic personality, friendship with Harmony and impact all contributed.
• Fan Nickname:
  • Xenilla for Spacegodzilla. In this case, the readers aren't the fans who came up with the nickname; the author is. Notes state that Tarbtano thought the official name sounded too ridiculous and he felt silly typing it; along with not wanting to confuse newcomers to the Godzilla franchise by having one character being another character's name (Godzilla) with an adjective. Later on it went full circle as other G-Fans started adopting the term.
  • The close-knit group of Anti-Villain comprised of Monster X, Gigan, Megalon, and Irys have been frequently called The Mercs given the cyborg's occupation as mercenaries; or The Hunters given their frequent occupation as treasure hunters for the Big Bad. Comic book fans have called them "Task Force X" or the "Suicide Squad".
  • Maybe of the core kaiju were given nicknames by the readers, Rodey (Rodan), Angy (Anguirus), Xen (Xenilla), Des or Dizzy (Destroyah), and Megs (Megalon).
  • Tarbtano himself was called frequently "Grendelson" for being a troll to such a caliber that only the lineage of Grendel could have spawned him. It became jokingly Ascended Fanon.
  • Tarbtano's girlfriend, co-creator, and main artist for the fic Faith-Wolff is often called 'the Queen' by fans.
  • Lunilla or LunZilla for the popular pairing of Princess Luna and Godzilla Junior.
• Foe Yay Shipping: Monster X and Aria Blaze have a pretty decent sized shipperbase amongst the readers. The fact X was after their gems, which are referred to as "Siren Hearts", isn't helping to stop this. They later team up, save each other's life multiple times, bond through training, and start showing concern for one another. By Chapter 29 they are heavily implied to be an Official Couple.
• Friendly Fandoms: The Bridge and Evowizard's The Shimmerverse readerbases intermingle and cross into each other frequently, enough one could make the case a majority of both groups are one and the same. Both stories have similar world building endeavors and have related groups on Fimfiction. Helps that the creators became friends and have praised each other's work before and the two series got a crossover.
• Genius Bonus:
  • When Lea, testing out her changeling abilities turns into a gender-flipped version of Junior. Junior remarks about how she looks like how he would if his egg was colder. Reptiles' genders are determined by their egg's temperature during early development, with females being more common at low temperatures.
  • Destroyah mentions that she's so huge because her kaiju form is a mutated arthropod. In many arthropod species, the females are a lot bigger and tougher than the males.
  • Azusa's lullaby to Godzilla Junior is a variation of "Edo Komoriuta" or the "Edo Lullaby", one of the oldest widespread lullabies from Japan.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: While the story has the expected large chunk of readers from the US, a sizable portion of the readerbase hail from rest of the Anglosphere, Indonesia, Mexico, and the Philippines.
• Growing the Beard: Post Chapter 9 we got the general status-quo set up with the Equestrians and main six kaiju, much larger chapters (Chapter 2 was 3,826 words; Chapter 30 was 24,584) as well as expanding the antagonist roster to include MLP villains and Anti-Villain kaiju. It's about this time when the story really began to pick up steam in the fandom.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight:
  • In the Holiday special, Sunset Shimmer councils Irys that if she's lost a family, she can look to making new friends and build a family off of them. In the actual Holiday special for the IDW Equestria Girls comic, Sunset Shimmer refers to her friends, the "Human 5", as her family.
  • It's implied in chapter 19 that Princess Cadance is pregnant. This is now officially canon as of The One Where Pinkie Pie Knows.
  • In the story, the Sirens pull a Heel–Face Turn and are able to feed on positive emotions instead of negative emotions by making people happy with their songs. In the music video "Find the Magic", this happens.^note At least until My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Sunset's Backstage Pass revealed that the canon Sirens hadn't actually repented and were just putting on an act.
  • Godzilla and Mothra are shown in this story to be Like Brother and Sister. Then along came Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019), which presented them as a symbiotic pair, jointly serving as King and Queen of the Monsters.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Happened enough it got its own page.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • The Dazzlings. They are all mind-controlling sea witches and consumed by arrogance and a desire for power. However, their lives have not been remotely easy: having experienced exile, banishment from one world to another, and being the spawn of monstrous winter spirits.
  • Sci-Twi becomes this. She is heavily disliked in (and out) of universe for for injuring Sonata, aiding the Wendigoes, and displaying incredible arrogance and ignorance. However, the torment she endures and the grief she experiences after learning her supposed mentor was a manipulative monster who didn't care about her is not remotely fun to watch. And that's on top of being a social outcast with only one real friend.
• Karmic Overkill: For some readers, the massive amount of suffering Sci-Twi goes, whether deserved or not, is horrific to read about.
• Memetic Badass: Azusa Aoki, maiden name Gojo, is the Almighty Mom of the Amalgam'verse. Jokes and art she can tell off her fully grown son Godzilla Junior have evolved to claims she can tell off anyone including the three deities.
• Memetic Mutation: Over the years it has spawned some memes in both the reader base and respective fandoms.
  • Godzilla Junior being an shipped with almost every female character he meets, or all of them. Reached Ascended Meme status when "Big Fish in a Small Pound" lampooned the harem idea.
  • People calling it the true Godzilla anime.
  • "Is [Insert Kaiju name here] going to be in the story?!"
  • The now more common fan works ideas of portraying Xenilla/SpaceGodzilla and Godzilla Junior as brothers, having Destroyah as female, and portraying Monster X as a Tragic Monster all have their origins or at least were popularized here.
• Misaimed Fandom:
  • There's a sect of fans who are firmly of the belief that Bagan at his full power would completely curbstomp Harmony and Grogar at their full power even at the same time. This is despite the huge amounts of effort the author has put into balancing the two sides of the story in contrast to many crossovers and that being the case would go completely against that, and repeated Word of God that the three characters are all equal to each other and Harmony was at the same percentage of her full power as Bagan when they fought. In fact, according to Word of God, the entire inspiration for this story was how many crossover Godzilla fics amounted to 'drop Godzilla into a franchise and let him flatten everything' and wanting to buck the trend, meaning that happening would go against everything the story was trying to do.
  • Mane-iac's crush on Gigan was supposed to be a parody of shipping. Instead, many people liked the pairing and they became a One True Pairing.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Mirror Junior crossed it by slaughtering the Mirror Deer Kingdom in cold blood.
  • Queen Chrysalis crossed it with her destruction of Timbucktu featured in The Eclipse Times by slaughtering the city's entire population, children included.
  • It's fair to say the Big Bad Bagan crossed this when it caused the mass extinction event that nearly wiped out all sapient life on Terra.
• Older Than They Think: This isn't the first time Jurassic Park III's Spinosaurus underwent Adaptational Heroism and got Rescued from the Scrappy Heap as a result.
• One-Scene Wonder: Attempted and averted due to reader adoration in both cases.
  • Blade Dancer was going to be this, but evolved into one of the main secondary characters.
  • Mane-iac shows up in the Halloween special, but due to growing into the readerbase's OTP she returns for the Valentine's Special.
  • Frostbite Sparkle, the fusion between Midnight Sparkle and the Windigos, is considered to be one of the terrifying beings of the fic, due to the tragic and frightening circumstances of her creation.
• One True Pairing: Despite having no backing from the latter party in-story and leaning dangerously on Foe Yay Shipping, a majority of the readerbase ships Mane-iac with Gigan. Or rather Mane-iac to Gigan. Ironically, Mane-iac's crush on Gigan was intended as a parody of shipping. People just thought it was too over the top funny not to love. Later on their Mirror Universe counterparts get a lot of Ship Tease moments.
• Platonic Writing, Romantic Reading: While the author intended for Godzilla Junior and Mothra Lea to come off as siblings, several of their scenes can come off as romantic. This became a minor problem in the Winter War arc due to Lea and Junior sharing several scenes where it is directly said that they love each other and a few scenes where even the writing says they could be mistaken for a couple.
• Rescued from the Scrappy Heap:
  • The albino hyper gyaos, later named Irys, easily could have been a forgettable villainess from a race that never got quite the same fan adoration of other Daiei kaiju like Legion or her Mythology Gag namesake, which would have been especially bad considering her Canon Immigrant status in a largely Toho universe. However, some good development and a Villainous Friendship with several other Anti-Villain kaiju and Sunset Shimmer cemented her Ensemble Dark Horse status.
  • Likewise, Raiga (a rather obscure kaiju) had these treatment in the spin-off, "A Sound of Thunder". While some argued that they'd prefer a more well known kaiju, her portrayal won the detractors over.
  • The same could be said about Kaizer Ghidorah. Before this story, he was hated by the majority of the Godzilla fandom thanks to his bad suit design, lack of explanation about his origins, etcetera. Now, thanks to having a new, more likable design, explicitly not being a replacement for King Ghidorah, an explanation about his origins, the overall reception has been positive.
  • When she was introduced, Moonbeam Glimmer was heavily disliked as an idiotic fearmonger. Fans quickly did a 180 once her heartbreaking backstory was told.
  • Rainbow Dash's mom, Rainbow "Radiance" Dash Senior is basically Generation 3 Rainbow Dash. One would think most Generation 4 fans would find her annoying, especially since she's wearing the Newborn Cutie's attire. You'd be dead wrong here as the readerbase adores "Mama Dashie" for being her own brand of Crazy Is Cool. It was strong enough that when Rainbow Dash's canonical mother was revealed in the show, numerous readers wrote in worried Radiance would be replaced, thankfully being told she was there to stay.
  • For some, the story giving Equestrian Flash Sentry traits like a Heroic Lineage he worries he's not living up to, a status as Shining Armor's protégé and right hand man, and Chronic Hero Syndrome are redeeming those who didn't like his Equestria Girls counterpart.
  • The Spinosaurus from Jurassic Park III, nicknamed "Snoke" in the setting, got more fans after his origin tale of being created by Dr. Henry Wu for a purpose was shown in a well received side story.
  • Gloriosa Daisy was in canon a relatively bland antagonist. But having a more complex backstory as the heir of Harmony's power in the human world, her far more heroic personality, and her chemistry with both Adagio and Gigan has given her a far more positive reception.
• The Scrappy:
  • Tarbtano received a lot of hate mail for even mentioning both the human and pony versions of Flash Sentry in the fic, as many fans of the Equestria Girls films heavily dislike him. One of Tarbtano's goals once the Amalgamverse reaches the Rainbow Rocks timeline is to correctly portray human Flash in a way that gets him Rescued from the Scrappy Heap. He's also started giving pony Flash some characterization.
  • Many fans were calling for Moonbeam Glimmer to be killed when she was introduced due to her antagonizing Godzilla Junior and seeming to be an Ungrateful Bastard to his heroics. This stopped once her backstory and Freudian Excuse were revealed.
  • Sci-Twi has become this to a certain extant. Her role in the fanfic is being a lackey of the Windigoes, who use her naivete to advance their goals. While Sci-Twi does genuinely believe she is doing the right thing, her blind arrogance, the trouble she causes for other characters, and brutally maiming Sonata (albeit accidentally) makes her heavily disliked. Most readers were cheering when Aria brutally beat Sci-Twi for what she did to Sonata .
  • Wallflower is even more heavily disliked because of her own ill-advised decisions while working for the Windigos, not to mention her motivations are not considered compelling by many readers
• Ship-to-Ship Combat: Developed in the early years with two of the main pairings the fans support, Godzilla Junior x Blade Dancer and Godzilla Junior x Luna.
  • Hilariously Tarbtano has gone on record several times saying the creation of the pairings was purely reader interpretation and any support he gave was accidental as he didn't feel confident he could write romance. However he found the prospect so amusing he decided to start dropping hints.
    • And now there's a third ship thrown in the mix (Xenilla x Blade Dancer). With Luna and Junior getting more support, some of the Blade Dancer group have jumped ship to this especially after Blade Dancer and Xenilla went through a lot of character development together. Others still maintain Blade Dancer as a better potential partner for Junior.
• Shocking Moments:
  • Kaizer Ghidorah vs. Grand King Ghidorah. Readers especially had this reaction when Kaizer tore one of King Ghidorah's necks off with brute strength alone.
  • Chapter 39. Where do we begin with this Tornado of Bombshells? To elaborate: Nightmare, the same entity that possessed Rarity and Luna, attempts to possess Godzilla Junior, subsequently getting sealed in Junior and creating Shin Godzilla. Concurrently, Kaizer Ghidorah is released in full by Grand King Ghidorah.
• Stoic Woobie: Godzilla Junior, Princess Celestia, and Monster X are both strong contenders for this at times. The Eclipse Times reveals Princess Celestia especially was this 1,000 years ago.
  • Godzilla Junior is actually a pretty nice guy who just finds himself in one bad circumstance after another. After effectively battling a war for nearly two decades straight to keep his world safe, more than anything he wants to be able to stop fighting and enjoy some peace. But because of how he views power, he just won't quit as long as there are threats the innocent can't face but he can. Retiring or taking too long of a break would only seem selfish to him.
  • It's extremely safe to say that Monster X's life has been a living hell, possibly even more so than any of the other characters. However, he simply continues to follow whatever orders he's given to the best of his ability, since that's all he really knows how to do well, and speaks of his inner turmoil to no one. Poor guy just doesn't know what else to do with himself other than be a Punch-Clock Villain.
  • Princess Celestia 1,000 years ago had just gone through all the conflicts with Grogar's students Tirek, King Sombra, and Discord; only to lose her sister and be forced to banish Nightmare Moon in a botched attempt to cure her. Her powers are on the fritz due to using the Elements of Harmony by herself, half the populace is confused and afraid of her with talks of rebellion, the Founders' attempts to comfort her result in her feeling useless; and her being unwell gives Chrysalis the chance to ravage Timbucktu. All of which Celestia blames herself for but is so emotionally broken she can't speak or emote.
• Take That, Scrappy!: Considering how disliked King Aspen and the other deer from "The Root of The Problem" were, it's hard to see Mirror Universe Godzilla destroying the Mirror Thicket Deer Kingdom and even eating some of the deer as anything else but this.
• Unexpected Character: Naturally from both franchises.
  • Even with as crazy as the April Fools' Day special was, nobody saw G3!Pinkie coming.
  • Given the story was already running for years by the time Shin Godzilla came out and the Godzilla incarnation present was drastically different from that version, the fact Shin Godzilla appeared as the Nightmare form for Godzilla Junior with a direct reference was very much out of left field for the readers.

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