Trivia / My Little Pony: Equestria Girls – Friendship Games

• Ascended Fanon:
  • Writers and fans have long speculated what it would be like if one of the Mane Six (mostly Twilight) ever made a Face–Heel Turn and tried to conquer/destroy Equestria. In the film, Human Twilight Sparkle becomes Midnight Sparkle, who is determined to study and understand magic so badly she starts tearing open portals to Equestria, not caring that she'll destroy the human world in the process.
  • Before the film's premiere, quite a few fanfic writers had depicted Sunset as using a motorcycle to get around town. Her skill in the motocross leg of the relay brings that characterization in line with the EQG canon.
  • In "Friendship Games Blooper Reel", the last scene shows a Pinkie Pie emerging from the portal, high-fiving another Pinkie Pie and taking her place. The fan theory that pony Pinkie Pie sometimes takes over the place of human Pinkie Pie at Canterlot High School is somewhat popular (see this fan webcomic, for example), to explain the spot-on "guesses" about Equestria she makes in the movies.
  • The scene in the Blooper Reel with human Rainbow Dash riding pony Rainbow Dash confirmed the most commonly accepted human-to-pony size ratio comparisons made by fans.
• Billing Displacement: Following the series' tradition, Tara Strong is billed first before Rebecca Shoichet. However in this movie, Sunset Shimmer is the true protagonist, while Twilight's human form functions as an antagonist.
• Blooper:
  • During the POV shot of Flash returning Human Twilight's glasses, for some reason the background around the lenses isn't blurry.
  • Each student who participated in the games is wearing a medal at the end (hence Celestia declaring everyone winners). Yet in the background Lemon Zest can be seen, but she isn't wearing a medal, and Sour isn't either even though her back is turned.
  • When Celestia is introducing Human Twilight as her new student, her medal is missing, but it reappears when Sunset and the Rainbooms welcome her.
• Cut Song: Partially. "What More Is Out There" was originally a Distant Duet shared with Sunset Shimmer, who sings a verse about how much she misses Equestria and wonders what's beyond the town she lives in, as a parallel to Human Twilight singing about wanting to move on from Crystal Prep. The song in the final version of the film is modified into a solo piece for Twilight, with all of Sunset's lines cut and a few of Twilight's reworked to fill in the gaps.
• Deleted Scene: Several scenes involving Sunset Shimmer were cut, mostly to drop a subplot involving Sunset wanting to go back to Equestria because of her frustration at not being able to understand the human world's magic. These include a brief scene in a diner discussing the idea with Princess Twilight, and a scene at the end of the film in which Human Twilight goes back to Crystal Prep instead of transferring to CHS, with Sunset deciding to stay in the human world. The scene where Sunset expresses her frustrations in the hallway was also longer, and focused more on this dropped subplot.
• Edited for Syndication: "Right There in Front of Me" and the Photo Montage that was intercut with the end credits were removed for the Discovery Family broadcast of the film. A shorter instrumental piece was used for the end title sequence instead. The scene in which Cinch chastises Twilight for not focusing on the Friendship Games and claiming that everyone at CHS is trying to confuse her by being friendly to her was cut. This takes place shortly after the Rainbooms and Principal Celestia meet human Twilight for the first time.
• Executive Meddling: The stated reason the deleted scenes involving Sunset's side-plot and Twilight staying at Crystal Prep were, well, deleted, and side-plot was dropped and the latter was replaced with Twilight transferring to Canterlot High. Likely related to the sequel having started production before this film was completed.
• Promoted Fanboy: Gabriel Brown, a.k.a. BlackGryph0n, already so prominent in the fandom that events usually give him equal billing to actual cast and crew, sings in the movie's choir.
• Refitted for Sequel: Midnight Sparkle having a twisted version of a unicorn horn carries over from a proposed design for Sunset Shimmer's demon form in the first film, which made it as far as that film's novelization.
• Screwed by the Lawyers: Unlike the rest of the Equestria Girls movies, the rights to the soundtrack have been licensed to Legacy Recordings, part of Sony Music Entertainment. Naturally, several weeks after the movie first aired, SME began flagging YouTube videos using the soundtrack for copyright infringement (most notably, the song "What More is Out There?", which also itself never got an official music video on YouTube), ranging from clips to analysis videos, the latter of which are supposed to be protected by Fair Use. Fans were not too pleased.
• Short Run in Peru: The uncut movie was broadcast in Canada by Family Channel quite a few hours before its Edited for Syndication premiere in Discovery Family, and weeks before the uncut release of the Blu-Ray/DVD.
• Spoiled by the Merchandise: The presence of Midnight Sparkle, "the dark side of Twilight Sparkle" was leaked as early as February 2015 by a German doll site, and her appearance in the movie was outright confirmed by a Hasbro employee at the New York Toy Fair 2015 that same month.
• Teasing Creator: The members of the production team that made the DVD Commentary have some fun with minutia of the story throughout the commentary, paying particular attention to subjects the Periphery Demographic is known to discuss at length on blogsites like Equestria Daily.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Songwriter and composer Daniel Ingram mentioned in the DVD Commentary that the song "ACADECA" was originally written as an actual rap; it was rewritten because it was, according to him, "really cheesy".
• "Unleash the Magic" was another song that got revised during production. While the overall motive of the song was the exact same as in the final cut (Principal Cinch and the Crystal Prep students convincing Twilight to use the magic she collected in her amulet to gain an edge in the friendship games), the tone of the song was completely different, with a more 'persuasive' feel rather than the more openly villainous tone that was used in the official version. More notably, the Crystal Prep students are less hostile to Twilight than they were in the final cut, and Principal Cinch came off as less manipulative than how she came off as in the final version.
  • The film was originally intended to be given a limited theatrical release just like its predecessors; the distributor, Screenvision, underwent a merger with KAOS Connect, which killed the theatrical release in the United States.
    President of Hasbro Brands John Frascotti: [...] So this Fall we are very excited we are going to premiere our third Equestria Girls film, it is called Friendship Games and we will debut it in theaters and then bring it on to television and various digital platforms and of course we will augment this film as we have done with prior films with a strong lineup of digital shorts.
  • According to the DVD commentary, Indigo Zap was originally Lightning Dust as the writing staff wanted counterparts to familiar ponies in Equestria to be the Shadowbolts. Indeed, one of the prototypes of the Shadowbolts dolls had the same color scheme as Lightning Dust. Eventually, the writing staff decided to create original characters and Lightning Dust was replaced with Indigo Zap. Spitfire was also under consideration, but the staff didn't think she was mean enough to play the Evil Counterpart to Rainbow Dash.
  • Deleted scenes for the film reveal an entire subplot involving Sunset Shimmer feeling homesick for Equestria after getting fed up trying to grasp how magic works in the human world, barred only by the close friendships she's formed at school. When this plot was dropped to open more possibilities for future installments, a few other things had to go as well:
    • The song "What More Is Out There" was written as a Distant Duet between Human Twilight and Sunset as their respective desires seemed to parallel perfectly. Without Sunset's half, it had to be reworked as the solo heard in the final cut.
    • Princess Twilight was to make an appearance in the middle of the film rather than The Stinger to give Sunset advice. The writers quickly felt that having two Twilights in separate scenes would make the film too confusing, and that removing Princess Twilight made more sense and raised the stakes.
    • Another deleted scene has an alternate ending where Human Twilight happily returns to Crystal Prep with her much friendlier classmates instead of transferring to Canterlot High.
  • Shining Armor was originally supposed to be more of a jerk to reflect the influence Crystal Prep had on him. He was toned down to sound closer to his Equestrian counterpart as the writers felt that he should still be Twilight's kind older brother despite Crystal Prep's influence.
  • Sunset and Twilight were supposed to be in a crater that was created during their battle after powering down as another reference to the final battle in the first movie. This was removed during the storyboarding stage.
  • Cinch was supposed to fall down the above-mentioned crater or a stray portal that would have sent her to Equestria as an ugly creature after attempting to leave. The former was left out after the crater was taken out, and the latter was considered too mean.
• Word of God:
  • According to Katrina Hadley (storyboard artist at the time) Sunset Shimmer's Golden Super Mode is called Daydream Shimmer.
  • Ishi Rudell mentions that the song "Dance Magic", featured in the soundtrack of the movie but otherwise not present in it or any of its shorts, is "unrelated", and that it's just a bonus for the soundtrack. It was later used as the focus of a short released after the next movie.

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