My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic: Every episode has a moral lesson — in many cases, it's explicitly spelled out at the end of each — but their events often suggest alternative or additional lessons as well.
Season 1
- "Swarm of the Century":
- The intended Aesop is that you should listen to your friends, even when they seem not to make sensenote , but most of the fanbase agrees that the message the episode actually demonstrated was "If you know the solution to a problem take the time to explain it rather than just expecting everyone to listen to you for no reason."note
- A secondary Aesp is "don't take animals you don't know anything about out of their natural environment. All Animals Are Domesticated is not a thing." The episode's crisis begins when Fluttershy decides to take home a mystery animal from the edge of the local monster forest despite not knowing what it is.
- "Suited for Success": The basic storyline is that Rarity offers to make formal dresses for the others and creates very good ones, but the other characters' nitpicking and obsessions with arbitrary details end up badgering her into creating new dresses to their specifications, which look awful. The stated lessons are "You can't please everybody", for Rarity, and "Don't nitpick a freely given gift", for the others. A common Aesop among the fanbase is "if you've commissioned an artist or expert to do something, let them work at what they're good at and don't interfere, because they know their craft better than you do."
- "Feeling Pinkie Keen" has the ostensible moral of "just because you don't understand something doesn't make it untrue". Most of the fanbase either interpreted the episode as saying "Science Is Bad", or, more charitably, "The purpose of science is to find the truth, not to prove your preconceived notions correct."
- "The Best Night Ever": In Pinkie Pie's segments, her inability to have fun among the stuffy high-class gathering is mostly meant to highlight how she, like all the others, is having a miserable time. However, it also reads as saying that different people have fun in different ways, and you can't make someone have fun in the same way you do if they don't want to try it.
Season 2
- "Lesson Zero"'s stated Aesop is "Don't belittle your friends' concerns, and don't let your fears turn a small problem into a big one". In a broader sense, it can be read as "No one is perfect, and it's okay to fail sometimes. It's better to accept failure gracefully than to abuse others to succeed." Additionally, since the episode is kicked into motion by Twilight's panic over Celestia giving her elaborate punishments for slipping in her study schedule, which ultimately doesn't happen because Celestia isn't very concerned with specific timing as long as Twilight learns what she's meant to learn, it gives a lesson along the lines of "Some teachers won't get mad just because you missed a deadline for an assignment, an missing one homework assignment is not the end of the world."
- "The Mysterious Mare-do-Well": The episode's stated lesson is that a real hero doesn't brag, and the issue is framed primarily as Rainbow rubbing her accomplishments in others' faces. In the episode itself, however, nobody but the main characters is particularly displeased with her showboating — most of Ponyville eats it right up — but a more immediately obvious issue is that Rainbow's grandstanding puts other people in immediate physical danger on a number of occasions. Thus, a more obvious Aesop ends up being something like "Being a hero is about helping people, not making yourself look good; you shouldn't prioritize your PR over actually saving people."
- "The Last Roundup": The stated lesson is that you shouldn't run away from your problems, and that it's fine not to always come in first at things. As the episode is kicked off when Applejack decides not to return to Ponyville but instead send back money, which saddens her friends and family and drives them to go out looking for her, another fairly clear Aesop is that your loved ones want you, rather than material possessions — getting cash in the main isn't the same thing as getting back a missing loved one.
- "Hurricane Fluttershy"'s moral is ostensibly "even if you don't feel you can make a difference, you can", but one can also get "School bullying is NOT harmless and can screw you up for life" out of it.
- "A Canterlot Wedding"'s moral, to trust your instincts, glosses over the mistakes that made things as bad as they got (Twilight's instinct that Cadance was evil was Right for the Wrong Reasons and made her discredit herself, while everyone else's instinct to trust "Cadance" over Twilight was horribly wrong). Fans instead viewed the moral as "you need to be tactful and have evidence even if you're right, but a claim without tact or evidence should still be heard out as it might have some truth".
Season 3
- "Magical Mystery Cure" has "A True, True Friend" deliver the intended Aesop about helping friends find their true selves in musical. However, the prominence and fantastic nature of the cutie marks/destinies swap caused many to see it as "don't blindly follow perceived destiny, especially if you're bad at it/it makes you and others miserable" and/or "you can Screw Destiny and be who you choose/want to be" despite more-or-less contradicting the happenings of the episode.Explanation
Season 4
- "Inspiration Manifestation": The intended aesops are "you need to tell your friends the truth rather than blindly praise them" and "constant praise actually can stifle your artistic integrity and it's all right to take some criticism now and then." It accidentally adds in the aesop of "your usual artistic style isn't always what the customer needs" for people in creative industries, told through Rarity having trouble building what a puppeteer wants because she adds her nouveau-riche flair to a puppet show booth.
Season 5
- "Princess Spike": Spike is shown using his connection to Twilight to make himself feel important and by abusing the authority to enjoy indulgent perks, and the episode tries to teach that this is wrong by having things result in a chain reaction that ruins a major diplomatic event. However, since the only things that cause any problems are the events Spike arranged on specific orders not to let anything disturb her rest, while the abuse of his authority causes no problems whatsoever, the illustrated morals become "don't attempt a job you're not qualified to do", "don't give a job to someone who isn't qualified".
- "Party Pooped": The stated lesson at the end is that it's best to show someone why you love home so they'll appreciate it, instead of trying and failing to mimic theirs. As Pinkie and the others spend most of the episode going to considerable efforts to try and fail to please the highly perfectionist and garrulous yaks, who respond to any imperfection by breaking things, another one is "It's good to make friends, but you shouldn't bend over backwards for someone who's being unreasonable."
- "Amending Fences": The stated Aesop is that you shouldn't let someone else's mistake rule your life and prevent you from making friends or being happy. Since the crisis was kicked off by Twilight casually dismissing Moondancer's invitation in the backstory, another obvious one is to be considerate of others' feelings, even if what they're doing doesn't seem like a big deal to you.
- "Canterlot Boutique": The primary moral is that you shouldn't sacrifice artistic vision for immediate success and that you shouldn't let people boss you around in your area of expertise. A secondary one, since the trouble comes from a new employee Rarity hired that turns out that have worked for a long chain of rapidly-failing boutiques, is that when you're holding a job interview don't neglect checking references, no matter how good someone's résumé is, especially if that same résumé indicates a history of rapid-fire job-hopping.
- "The Mane Attraction":
- The stated Aesop is that you shouldn't let yourself be blinded by fame and lose sight of your true self, and that friends aren't about those who influence you to be something you're not. The specific way that this is framed — Coloratura is portrayed as having made a serious mistake in going into modern pop music and as being much happier doing more sedate classical pieces — suggests that being an over-the-top edgy pop star who pushes boundaries is bad, and that tasteful, bare-bones productions are better.
- The characters are originally intimated by Coloratura's cold public persona but find her to be very personable in private, providing a secondary Aesop about how you shouldn't judge famous individuals as being mean or unfriendly just because they're celebrities. Although there are celebrities who are mean off-stage, some may also surprise you.
Season 6
- "The Cart Before the Ponies" delivers the moral "Adults aren't always right". Considering specifically how the adult characters in this episode managed to screw things up, it could just as easily be interpreted that there was another moral for the adults in the audience — "Don't try to live vicariously through your children".
