Unintentionally Sympathetic / My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic

• "The Great and Powerful" Trixie, while bringing it upon herself with her boasting, ends up losing her reputation and probably almost everything she possessed at the end of her introductory episode, which many people believe was disproportionate to her wrongdoings. Much of the sympathy arose from her "boasting" being fairly typical Stage Magician banter, that all she managed to do was introduce herself as "Great and Powerful" and shoot off some fireworks before Rainbow Dash and Rarity decided to loudly heckle her show, that all the truly obnoxious things she did were in direct response to them disrupting her act, and that Twilight exposed her without meaning to. It certainly doesn't help that Snips and Snails get instantly forgiven for bringing the Ursa into town, which was not only a much worse act than anything Trixie did but was also the reason things went so sour in the first place. Season 3 actually refers to this later on, when Trixie returns to Ponyville to get revenge on the town for having her livelihood ruined. It also makes Trixie far less sympathetic, punishing the entire town for the actions of the few hecklers and those who were bullying her and vandalizing her wagon, using Snips and Snails as slave labor, and targeting Twilight Sparkle who did nothing wrong to her. It should be noted though that she was corrupted by a powerful amulet at that time and that she apologized after she was freed from its influence, going on to eventually become a mainstay recurring character.
• Queen Chrysalis and the changelings were meant to be an Always Chaotic Evil race who sought to invade Equestria to steal and feed on its love. But the implication they needed to feed on love to survive caused them to instead come off as a Woobie Species forced to do so and operating under Blue-and-Orange Morality rather than maliciousness. Chrysalis was the only one to show excessive/unrelated cruelty, but this added to the changelings sympathy by being made to commit such and suffering under a Bad Boss, and for many wasn't enough to offset that she was trying to feed her subjects. It's only after the fact Ascended Fanon that there later appearances would fix this, showing the changelings sympathetically and have them pull a Heel–Race Turn, while Chrysalis subverted it by putting her wants over her subjects' wellbeing and refusing redemption.
• Rainbow Dash in "The Mysterious Mare-Do-Well." The episode is notorious for making it look like the rest of the cast goes overboard in trying to teach Dash humility, thinking that Dash's actions weren't bad enough to merit the treatment she got. Conceited about it or not, Rainbow saved no less than six lives. And the other seem to be punishing her for her rescue efforts.
• Lightning Dust from "Wonderbolts Academy." Her recklessness and lack of regret for nearly killing Rainbow Dash's friends by accident led to her being booted from the team. But between Lightning's superiors encouraging this attitude prior, her not getting a chance to change her attitude after her superiors decided it was wrong, how "at fault" she was for the incident being debatable^note Fans, particularly those in the military themselves, have pointed out that Twilight and her friends really had no business wandering into what amounted to an active training zone unannounced like that, equating it to someone who was nearly run over at a NASCAR race for hopping the fence and running out into the track, and putting the blame squarely on them for trespassing (if they just showed up) or The Wonderbolts organization (if they let them in)., Lightning's heartbroken reaction to being booted, and many other characters being Easily Forgiven for as bad or worse,^note Such as Rainbow Dash herself in "Newbie Dash", who much like Lightning Dust puts the ponies around her in danger to make herself look good. she topped the poll for villain fans wanted redeemed. This would have happened in the original ending where she merely got demoted to Rainbow's wingpony instead of being booted from the team entirely and stayed friends with her. Instead, by the time the show came to an end Lightning Dust remained one of the few antagonistic characters to go unredeemed, though she at least gets a happy ending in her own right with her in charge of her own successful stunt squadron called The Washouts and her proudly declaring in the end that she and Rainbow Dash are "rivals for life".
• The Pinkie Pie clones in "Too Many Pinkie Pies". Their exact nature is still left up for debate: the writers tried to make it clear that the clones are just purely magical manifestations of Pinkie's basic personality, but they are shown apparently having actual feelings and emotions and learning just like real ponies. Furthermore, even them being mere "pure magical manifestations" does little to make them seem less "real", as it's a series where all characters are inherently magical (in fact, as shown with Tirek, them losing their magic will destroy their world) in an inherently magical world, and characters like Discord and the Tree of Harmony also appear to be purely magical entities, leaving fans to wonder what differences there are, if any, between a "real" character and a "magical entity" in that world. Theories crop up all the time, and it makes the climax of the episode with all the clones getting sent back to the pool, that is effectively destroyed, without the ponies even considering alternatives or wondering if these "entities" were more than just that, feel far too morbid for most. The fact that at least one clone apparently survived, now living a perfectly normal life and having apparently learned to behave distinctly differently than the original Pinkie, doesn't help as it apparently cements that they Really Were Born Yesterday rather than mere manifestations of magic.
• "Putting Your Hoof Down" tries to push Iron Will as a jerkass who deliberately turns Fluttershy into a bully, but his advice isn't quite as mean-spirited as the episode would like you to believe and Fluttershy makes her own choice to take his teachings too far. He also proves rather reasonable when she refuses to pay up, quoting his "satisfaction guaranteed or you pay nothing" policy. Accordingly, when he returns in "Once Upon a Zeppelin", he is much more overtly sleazy.
• The Cutie Mark Crusaders in "One Bad Apple" were supposed to have become as bad as Babs Seed when they retaliated against her bullying by sabotaging her parade float. But it's shown it only would have gotten her slightly covered in mud, which seemed childish and minor compared to how frequent and severe Babs' bullying was portrayed as. It doesn't help either that the Cutie Mark Crusaders did attempt other ways of avoiding and dealing with Babs and only "became as bad as Babs" out of desperation when the other ways failed, and that the end of the episode makes it fairly clear that Applejack wouldn't have done anything about the bullying if they had just gone to tell like she wanted them to.
  • Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon come off as this in the same episode. After entering the episode with their typical "Blank Flanks" bullying routine (which is what leads to Babs joining them so that she won't be bullied herself), they don't really do much of anything except laugh about the bullying that Babs is doing to the CMC. Yet at the end of the episode when Babs tells them off for picking on the CMC, they fall into mud and get laughed at by Babs and the CMC. We're supposed to see this as their comeuppance, but not only did it not feel earned but it creates a Broken Aesop since Babs and the CMC are now bullying the bullies, the very thing that was framed as being wrong when the CMC tried to do it to Babs (and what made them Unintentionally Sympathetic.)
• Spike in "Just for Sidekicks" is the Butt-Monkey whose treatment is supposed to be karma for pawning off his responsibilities on others and taking on more than he can handle. Unfortunately, the episode begins with him not being invited back to the Crystal Empire which he helped save, which makes it hard not to feel sorry for him, and led several fans to feel his Butt-Monkey treatment was in poor taste. It also doesn't help that his driving motivation is simply wanting a small quantity of gems to bake a cake which is somehow treated as wrong and greedy in and of itself (complete with a scene of Zecora stealing one of his gems and giving it away because it's apparently wrong for dragons to want payment for doing a job) and how the pets are acting WAY worse than they normally do with Angel Bunny deliberately making Spike's life miserable For the Evulz. The next season revealing that he suffers from self-esteem issues certainly didn't help either.
• Spike in "Princess Spike" gets hit with the same Butt-Monkey treatment from "Just For Sidekicks", but this time as "punishment" for genuinely trying to help Twilight Sparkle^note While he does do some self-serving stuff, this goes completely without consequence and isn't any different than the ways Twilight or the other princesses reward themselves for doing said job. Between taking all the blame for merely trying to do a job that was given to him (with none falling on those who gave him said job), as well as some blows he takes from a plant called Dragonsneeze that does exactly what you think and was inexplicably planted all over the place, most felt it went too far and saw it as a Sadist Show. Even series director Jim Miller agreed that perhaps they hit Spike too hard this time.
• Applejack in "Hearthbreakers". The whole episode is supposed to be about her learning that she was being too closed minded about Pinkie's family and their Hearth's Warming traditions, to the point where even her own family warned her that she shouldn't be interfering. However this glosses over the fact that the Pie family can easily be accused of the exact same thing, seeming to expect the Apples to follow their traditions without question and never allowing an alternative point of view. In fact, Applejack was the only one who did try and embrace the other's way, forcing herself to eat their rock soup when the rest of her family only complained.
• "Parental Glideance" had Rainbow Dash depicted as being totally in the wrong for snapping at her Amazingly Embarrassing Parents, even though she had good reason to be upset at them cheering on every little thing she did, including interrupting a Wonderbolt show with fireworks. While Dash handled her conflict badly by screaming at them, Dash's mom and dad were the ones antagonizing Rainbow, while she was just supposed to grin and bear it.
• Rainbow Dash in "Grannies Gone Wild" is portrayed as selfish for wanting to walk away from chaperoning Granny Smith and her friends to ride the Wild Blue Yonder roller coaster, and in the wrong for assuming that the old mares are so feeble that they need to be treated like toddlers. There are two major problems there:
  • Riding the aforementioned roller coaster is the entire reason Rainbow Dash wanted to go to Las Pegasus to begin with, and the only reason she agreed to chaperone the old mares in return for Applejack filling in for her at the School of Friendship. Yet after she agreed to that deal, Applejack gave her a list of rules including "Don't let them out of your sight, EVER!". If followed, that rule would have left Rainbow with no time to ride the roller coaster, denying her the one thing she was promised in return for her services as chaperone. Rainbow Dash actually explains this to Applejack, only for her concerns to be blindly dismissed with "You'll find time". Plus, if one applies the episode's intended Aesop, then the mares should not have needed constant supervision; Rainbow was doing them essentially no harm by leaving them alone for a few hours. Rainbow Dash could have neatly resolved all that by discussing her intentions with the mares, but:
  • Rainbow Dash's overprotective treatment of the mares is purely the result of her following the rules given to her by Applejack. For someone with no real experience working with the elderly, said rules (especially "Don't let them out of your sight", as well as the forceful tone with which Applejack explained the rules) would be hard to interpret in any other way than "These old farts actually are so feeble that they need to be treated like toddlers"; there is no way Rainbow Dash could reasonably have known how excited is too excited, what kinds of foods are soft enough, or what kinds of dancing to watch out for. Nor could Rainbow have known of Applejack's history of being grossly overprotective, given that she was not there for the events of "Somepony to Watch Over Me". Yet when the mares chew Rainbow out over the way she treated them, the fact that she was Just Following Orders is only briefly acknowledged.
• Like the Pinkie Clones, the "Mean" clones of the Mane Six get a similarly morbid hand dealt to them that garnered some pity, especially since they're definitely sentient. Their entire existence is spent basically being slaves of Queen Chrysalis and threatened with death every step of the way if they don't do her dirty work, and while for the most part, they are genuinely bad ponies (especially the clones of Fluttershy and Twilight Sparkle), they don't seem any worse than the pre-redemption changelings who came off as equally evil and eager to do wrong complete with Evil Laughs and grins while attacking Canterlot. They also never get the chance to do much villaining outside of scheming to free themselves from Chrysalis (or anyone's) control, prompting them to attack the tree and be unceremoniously and graphically destroyed for it. Evil or not, it's hard not to sympathize with six villains Born into Slavery, threatened every step of the way by an Evil Queen, and ultimately killed for trying to free themselves from it. Especially the clone of Rainbow Dash, who actually does nothing even remotely evil or bad in the entire series (even sitting out the attack on the tree) but is killed off all the same: even most of the fan art of her portrays her as The Woobie.
• In Season 9, Tirek, Chrysalis, and Cozy Glow were meant to subvert any sympathy due to showing that despite learning the power of friendship, they reject said friendship out of spite to the concept, thus establishing them as completely irredeemable. But many were left with the opposite impression due to their Pet the Dog moments to each other, which continued even after supposedly rejecting their friendship, their mistreatment by Grogar and showing more redeemable traits than many of the show's redeemed villains displayed before their Heel Face Turns. This caused many to assume that they could have been redeemed if given time and encouragement, causing their being deemed Beyond Redemption by the heroes, who never know of their redeeming moments, to be highly controversial. This especially applied to Cozy Glow as many couldn't buy a child being so irredeemably evil in this setting without a mitigating reason. Worse, Grogar was actually Discord, who was forcing them into a position with Implied Death Threats where they would have been similarly punished without giving them the attempt to redeem them as he himself was given.
• In "2, 4, 6, Greaaat", we're supposed to feel upset at Rainbow Dash for essentially ditching her duty of coaching the School of Friendship's cheer squad to do something she would rather do like watch and help the buckball team. The two major problems are, Twilight Sparkle couldn't have picked a more disinterested and underqualified mate as Rainbow repeatedly states, and it's revealed in the end Twilight Sparkle purposely Voluntold Rainbow Dash to do a task she didn't want to do to teach her a lesson. Why the audience is supposed to be upset with a character for having a perfectly reasonable and understandable reaction to unfair treatment by someone who purposely made them do it because they knew they wouldn't want to do it is anyone's guess, especially when both times Discord has messed with Twilight in a similar way to teach her a lesson she was every bit as upset as Dash was and this was treated as a reasonable reaction.